The START of Rho-Ophiuchi

[LewisM]

Decided to go against the grain and NOT do Rho-Ophiuchi wide field, but deep instead. It needs, errrr, a few hours :) I didn't think it was THAT dark :)

So, may end up being a mosaic, or just the arched dark neb as shown here. This is only 30 miniutes of target with the 102 refractor - she's gonna need a lot more photons yet Jim! I stretched it as far as possible (I think it was 10 or so stretches before it even showed much colour!) for the paltry 30 mins, but she's still pixellated and noisey.

Tonight is good, so at it again.

EDIT: the linked image is the same as the most recent, put here to compare directly: http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/attachment_browse.php?a=137667

[David Fitz-Henr]

Nice start Lewis - keep bringing on those photons!

[multiweb]

Good start for the mosaic. :thumbsup: Yeah it is faint unfortunately and needs a lot of data but the result and colors are worth it. Ideally a 200mm or 150mm lens is the way to go to mosaic this. Longer FL is a lot of work and stitching the panels is not easy. Lots of color gradients and differences in illumination.

[Octane]

Good luck -- it's not for the faint of heart building mosaics.

I'm into my third year on Rho Ophiuchus.

H

[jase]

A good start indeed but you'll need to get yourself a mosaic plan in order to stay on track. If its your first mosaic, go with an easier area of the sky. Looking at the FoV, you're going to need more than 8 panels to cover the area and even then it would be tight. Don't forget to calculate your panel overlap too as you don't want to be wasting time with large overlaps sacrificing image real estate. Equally too little overlap and you run this risk of gaps that you need to go back and acquire. Not fun. Keep at it.

[LewisM]

Another 1hr 05 minutes data added. Really starting to smooth out, colours now more natural without needing to stretch it to extremes (in fact, this is only 2 stretches). 3 x 10 min, 7 x 5 min

Ideally like at least another 4 hours on it.

Had to crop this one slightly, since 2 HEAVY motes on the left side thanks to some paint flacks falling onto the focal reducer.

Had issues with cloud then a cranky guidecamera tonight. NOT my night.