IC4628 Prawn and Dark Tower mosaic

[troypiggo]

Been experimenting with mosaics - the mosaic planning/framing wizard in SGP, and PI's processing using CatalogStarGenerator for registration and the GradientMergeMosaic process.

Here's first go at a 2x2 mosaic, an Ha image of the Prawn and Dark Tower region. Each panel was 8x4mins binned 2x2. Quite happy with the result. Planning on adding some RGB and OIII/SII later. Did capture some OIII/SII for the Prawn panel, will post and update with that later.

Critiques welcome.

Full size on my Flickr (https://flic.kr/p/J6CR9J).

[RickS]

Cool to see those two objects in the same field, Troy! I'm hoping to get a LRGB mosaic of a few panels done at Astrofest this year.

[marc4darkskies]

Very nicely done Troy! Excellent composition and great tonal quality! :thumbsup:

Cheers, Marcus

[strongmanmike]

Cracking field Troy, not too many images out there showing these two as a pair, looking forward to seeing what you do on this one :thumbsup:

Mike

[Atmos]

Turned out great Troy, quite a large field! I am still yet to do a mosaic, images like this make me want to take the plunge.

[ozstronomer]

Great image Troy, nice FOV.

Mosaic looks seamless, well done :thumbsup:

Cheers Geoff

[Andy01]

Interesting FOV, probably just me but I'm struggling to get my head around it 'cos it's presented sideways to the one I'm working on!
Lots going on in that field :)

[gregbradley]

Fabulous composition. I did not know the Prawn was so close to the Dark Tower.

Not sure how you are going to do an LRGB out of it from here though. I normally do LRGB panels and then combine those into a mosaic.

Greg.

[Retrograde]

That looks great Troy. What an amazing field.

[troypiggo]

Cheers mate. Since I'm going to be up there for more nights this year than I normally do, I was also thinking of doing some sort of mosaic. That's what this rehearsal is for :)



Thanks, Marcus.



Cheers mate. As a few others have commented, it puts it in perspective how close they are relative to each other.



Dooooo eeeeet. :)



Cheers mate.



There is lots to look at. Re angles/framing, this is simply at sky angle 0 rotation. I do try to consider rotating frames for composition, but for this particular one, the easy solution (no rotation) worked for me.



Thanks mate. I used a 3500x3000px image downloaded from catalogues using PI's CatalogStarGenerator script. Since that's the reference image for the mosaic, I'm hoping it'll be a simple task to register all frames (L, R, G, B, whatever) to it and combine. That's the plan, anyways :)



Cheers mate. I'm really enjoying the wider fields with multiple objects, as opposed to tightly framed single objects.

[Paul Haese]

Excellent field of view Troy. I look forward to the final image.

[Placidus]

Very fine, Troy. Quite lovely. Interesting to see that the nebulosity around the Dark Tower is much fainter than the Prawn. Tower reminds me of a cross between a lighthouse, complete with beam of light, and a Dalek with a light saber. The little clusters help make the scene.

Momentarily ignoring the recognizable individual parts, the whole thing is a beautiful composition.

[Rex]

That's a beautiful shot Troy, very natural looking, I love it!

[multiweb]

Great field Troy. Can't go wrong with Ha in that part of the sky. It's choke-a-block with it. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[troypiggo]

Thanks mate. I've got some RGB data at moment - figuring out how to blend/merge process is a bit more complicated than just the Ha :)



Cheers guys. Hadn't thought about the lighthouse and Dalek analogies, but now that you mention it...



Thanks Rex. I prefer the "natural" look.



Thanks mate. Sure is. Not long to AF now :)