Very first mosaic attempt

[Atmos]

Yesterday morning I went clear sky chasing which lead me to travel from Melbourne to Bega, NSW.

To cut a long story short, rained most of the way, cleared up when I got there, drizzled for 5 minutes just before I started setting up and then cleared to beautiful clear skies. About 30 minutes later fog drifted in.... About an hour after that the fog dissipated.... And then it came back with vengeance!

This is what I was able to salvage out of the mosaic that I had planned. Every image was taken through fog, some worse than others obviously. It is currently a 20 panel mosaic but I have had to scrap all of the others that were supposed to make up the left hand side. The right hand side was just incomplete and had to stop when I could no longer see the sky through the haze.

I haven't done anything in the way of real editing yet, just randomly selected a patch for Black levels and then stretched ready to be attached. When you've got terrible data there isn't any point putting in the effort :P

So far, including all of the black it is a 370mp image. I have plans of completing a much larger image but :cloudy:

I had my Nikon D700 attached to my Sky Rover giving it an effective focal length of 676mm. All 120s subs.

[Placidus]

Talk about dedication!

And talk about a HUGE mosaic! The planets and raindrops were aligned against you, but to put that BigFoot mosaic together at all is quite impressive.

[Atmos]

This weekend I am planning on doing what I had planned on doing Wednesday night; 15x15 panel 2 gigapixel mosaic of the Milky Way centre. After the fog rolled in a couple of nights ago I figured I'd see what I could get as a test. Both in image capture and processing.

What I have learned is that I'll have to most likely limit it to 60-90s exposures this late in the season, probably closer to 60s. Even with 60s exposures it's still a 4 hour integration with single shots on each panel.

Bigfoot is a composite of one of my first test shots (testing my PA) and my last (before the fog became far too thick).

[Somnium]

wow, that will be something for sure !

[strongmanmike]

Of course!.. your first mosaic ever!...may as well make it 12 panels :eyepop: :lol:

Love your little stories, certainly makes life interesting huh?.....not :bashcomp:

Great area to mosaic though :thumbsup:

Mike

[Regulus]

What an expanse! The pictorial definition of 'panoramic'.
It's a pretty good return on a challenging night, but a shame you didn't get all the time you had hoped for.
But this is gonna be a fantastic picture when finished. Really look forward to it.
Well done.
Trev

[Atmos]

It'll be printable that's for sure :P



There are 12-14 that are of decent quality, I should probably do a test with those and see what I can extract. May head to my grandparents place in Deni, NSW on Sunday afternoon and see if I can use their clear skies :P

This is lately a test so that in 6-8 months I can start what I really want to do which is a 25 gigapixel image :eyepop: I figure if I am going to go big... Go BIG!



Thinking about messing with 12-14 of these to get a pano of the lower galactic bulge.
When it's done I'll post a 50-100mp image for people to surf through :P

[atalas]

So,your portable right?12 panels....and crazy:P:thumbsup:...I think I like you.

[Atmos]

Portable yes, would love to be grounded somewhere hehe

I went to go and play with some of the data and I think I may have accidentally deleted it :/

[RickS]

Good luck with your very ambitious project, Colin! Nice to make a start even if things didn't go as well as you'd hope :)

[Maurice]

Congrats on the start of your panorama with the new set up Colin..

I feel your pain with the weather down here... Its been a bad winter for imaging..

Try 'get data back' for data recovery.. Saved me on a few occasions a while back..

Cheers
Maurice

[multiweb]

Major undertaking Colin. You've lost me with that mosaic though. Are all the panels in the right orientation (or I need another coffee...). I like the M8 panel though. Very cool. :thumbsup:

PS: I agree with Louie, you're crazy mate. Wait for better weather to start something like this. :lol:

[Regulus]

I'm up for it if you are :rofl:

[Atmos]

I've just given up on it, the universe has conspired against me for this. Three hours ago I had five different weather (CFN, yr.no, Meteogram, ACCUWeather & Skippy Sky) sites telling me that Wagga Wagga was the place to be, that it would be clear from 7pm onwards and throughout the night... And it was clear until 6:45 when I was almost finished setting up, now I cannot see a single star!

By the time I get home tomorrow I'll have driven near 3,000 km and had 5 attempts at this. It is just not meant to happen :(



It's been a pretty bad year, global warming!



I think it was my bad PA and tiny pointing profile that caused the issue. Although it would track fine for 120s I think the slewing between target areas was a bit off. That's all I can think of to cause the disjointedness.

Tonight was my last attempt for a number of reasons. After tonight the moon becomes too obstructive for near another month and then by the time the next full moon rolls around (Snake Valley) it will have dropped 30º lower at the same time making it too late in the season to knock off.
If we get a clear run over Snake Valley weekend I may be able to knock it off Saturday night as I'll hopefully already be PA'd and ready to go the moment it gets dark enough.

It was basically get it done this weekend or wait 8 months for the beginning of the next season.

[Retrograde]

You don't do anything by halves do you Colin? :lol:

Sorry to hear about your weather issues. Driving all that distance is certainly dedication.

I've got a mosaic that I hope to be able to post up in the next few days. A whopping two panels!

[Atmos]

At midnight last night after it finally cleared up I tried doing about the top third of the mosaic imaging at 22-25º altitude (terrible to do) but then the fog rolled in about a 10 images in :/

I actually don't mind driving, quite relaxing for the most part. Not fond of losing a whole weekend and three days of work with nothing to show for it however.

Look forward to seeing your mosaic, not quite as big and adventurous but I'm just a bit crazy!

[Stevec35]

Good luck with it Colin. I don't have the patience to do mosaics unless they are very small.

Cheers

Steve

[Atmos]

I'd never even attempted one before but after what I'd done above I can certainly understand why!