M16 Narrowband

[lazjen]

I think I've spent as much time trying to process all the data as it took to acquire it (over 40 hours).

I've learned a few things while doing and realise that I've got a lot more to learn too. :)

The data has been mixed as per the Hubble palette and then probably severely abused by my processing to get the colours you see here. I like the nebula features that are being shown and the stars, while not great, are better than some of my previous attempts. One of the many things to improve, no doubt.

I was attempting to mosaic a much larger area, but the data outside this limited mosaic area was too weak to incorporate, especially the OIII data. I'd be interested in thoughts on how to go about acquiring data for larger mosaics. Do you collect all filters in a frame first, then move on to an overlapped area, or do all of a particular filter first for a larger area, then repeat for each filter? How much overlap do you do? I also found that the overlap areas were not parallel (trying to find guide stars) so there were some interesting intersections to handle in the processing that were hard to manage.

Any other tips?

Astrobin for larger images, details: http://astrob.in/214281/0/

188709

[RickS]

Looks good, Chris. Colours are quite different to a typical Hubble palette.

I have done a couple of largish mosaics, a 2x3 and a 3x3. We captured the data for both a panel at a time. It might be a little easier to match the panels if you collect data across multiple panels each night but have never tried it. I wouldn't aim for less than 10-20% overlap but I have made do with less.

Did you see the new PI script for planning a mosaic?

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=9057.0

Cheers,
Rick.

[lazjen]

Well, at least I owned up to the colour abuse. :) I did try for a gold-ish colour, but it slipped more to brown that I didn't find as appealing.



Good. i was hoping for that. If I fix some of the other things I did wrong, that's at least one thing less to worry about.



No, I did not, but I'll grab that before I attempt my next one. Thanks.