Milky Way Widefield

[Atmos]

I've given up trying to finish this image this year, weather isn't playing nice so Colin has given in to the Weather Gods of which I have offended.

It is a somewhat hard crop of an 18 panel shot, currently have it printed and framed as a 14"x14" image. Each panel consists of 7x180s at ISO800, shot with a Nikon D7200 and Sigma Art 85mm F/1.4 @ F/2.8.

High Res (http://www.astrobin.com/full/307555/0/)

This is supposed to be a 36 panel mosaic but on the two nights that the images were taken the other 18 panels didn't have much overlap (none at all in places) and one frame doesn't even fit so I have no idea where that is taken.

Will come back to this next year but this is the finished version for now.

[strongmanmike]

Wow!....ya gotta look at the full resolution (http://www.astrobin.com/full/307555/0/?real=&mod=) image guys :eyepop:

Excellent, getting close to a Casswell image that :thumbsup:

Mike

[traveller]

Nice and sharp.
Great depth and colours.
Well done Colin.
Bo

[multiweb]

That's so cool Colin. Mammoth effort. It's great to see everythjing in context yet to have enough resolution to dive right in. I like the bit of corona australis and all the little globs off the milkyway boundaries. Awesome map. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: Also just noticed the offset in Saturn with my shot. Tracked a fair bit.

[JA]

Great Job Colin :thumbsup: The only thing it doesn't do is talk!!

Best
JA

[Retrograde]

Stunning wide-field image Colin. Excellent work.

[RickS]

A huge project, Colin, and an impressive result!

[Atmos]

The full res square crop is 14762x14762, I do have a larger version that is uncropped however :P Still only 18 panels though. Until next year!

Some of Troy's shots are amazing, certainly helps using a modded DSLR with the Ha response. I wouldn't say that the Ha response is bad in the D7200 but it certainly ain't great.



Thanks Bo. Equipment does all the work, I'm just the monkey pressing the buttons :lol:



I had hopes of originally doing this as a HaLRGB with my QHY163 and the Sigma Art but between my first Sigma having issues, QHY having some delays with getting the adapters and me being so lazy in ordering rings ect. (they only arrived a couple of weeks ago) it never happened.
I do plan on getting a Samyang 135mm F/2 for that bit of extra resolution of which you speak :P

You are right about Saturn, it actually moves a noticeable amount night by night, enough that if my 7 frames had been done a one per night statistical rejection could make it go away :P




Thanks



Lost count to the number of times I reprocessed this but it has been shelved for this year :)

[Martin Pugh]

Very nice Colin, lovely colour balance and I particularly like the inclusion of NGC 6726 in the frame amongst the myriad other objects of course.

well done.

Martin

[Placidus]

Bigger than Ben Hur. The colour is particularly impressive, beautiful.

[gregbradley]

Brilliant Colin, I love it. The mosaic stitching seems very flawless, which program did you use for that?

Greg.

[Octane]

That's absolutely beautiful. Well done!

H

[Atmos]

Thanks Martin. The data I've captured shows a significantly larger area above Rho but it also has 1-2 tiny patches of no data at all. My fault, when I was setting up the mosaics I put in a wrong setting so some of the other frames don't have much overlap... or any at all :/



Thanks MnT. I did have to do some work in Photoshop (Lightroom) to remove some mosaicing colour issues as I had a couple of regions and went pretty blue! Only took maybe 10 minutes to fix with a brush :)



I actually had some pointing issues on the first night so the first nights images were offset maybe 400px from the second night. So I ended up using two sets of stacked images, one stack registered to the first night and another stack registered to the second.

Threw everything into Autopano Giga and let it weave its manic. Had to fiddle with a lot of the stitching settings so that it reduced some colour mismatches but trying to do it in PI is downright impractical.



Thanks H, I'm quite pleased with the result :)

[Ryderscope]

I admire your effort and the resulting output Colin. You should be very pleased with the result.

[Paul Haese]

Massive project Colin with lots to look at and peruse. Colour is good too.

[Atmos]

I'm pretty happy with the way it has turned out, wanted more but I missed up the frame locations on the first two nights and just haven't had reasonable weather since :(


Thanks Paul, I've decided I like mosaicing :D

[markas]

Wow - wonderful!

You really need a MUCH bigger print!!!

Mark

[atalas]

Wonderfully wide, with great colour Colin :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[rustigsmed]

Wow Col, excellent work! annoyed i didn't click on this one sooner!
print it off and have it as a wall!

[Atmos]

In my mind I'd consider a 40x40 print but I've got nowhere to hang it :lol:



Thanks Louie :)



Thanks Russell, already have it printed and frames :)

[Peter Ward]

What a sublime result.

I really like the fact you didn't try to emulate Troy's style of panorama (also excellent)...but I prefer seeing the details, with closer inspection, in an image, rather than well-stylised layers.

One to be proud of for sure!

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[DJT]

Hi Colin, that's an epic image, the full rez is excellent! Well done!

[cazza132]

Nice work Colin :thumbsup: Loads of resolution and detail! Is it a work in progress by adding new areas? Once you have a system in place, it becomes easier to do that. Hardest part though is correcting colour cast between panels. Airglow (and other variances in ambient and sky conditions) can cause havoc there. Keep up the good work!

[Atmos]

It was going to be a work in process. This was a 15-18 panel (as I’d cropped) out of a 36 panel that I’d originally planned. My PA was a bit off so the outer 18 panels didn’t register well (a number of frame gaps). Although I’d considered redoing it again this year, I’ve started a bigger project so this is on the back burner.

I’ve found that the PI MosaicGradientMerge script does a great job with gradients and the like.

[tornado33]

Looks absolutely fantastic when displayed on our Samsung QLED 4K tv :)

[Atmos]

It is best viewed in large :)