Rho Oph Nebula Complex

[Atmos]

I'm slowly making my way through some data from last year and I thought I'd share a 15 panel mosaic of Rho!
Taken me a couple of days to make my way through the 15 panels to get myself a nice 1.4 gigapixel image but for your viewing pleasure I've dropped it down to a cool 16.5 megapixels.

High Resolution on Astrobin (https://www.astrobin.com/full/393730/B/)

[spiezzy]

OMG that is awesome Colin unbelievable Wow i am speechless got to have another look
cheers Pete

[gregbradley]

Stunning Colin, really well done.

Greg.

[Stonius]

Wow! Love it!

[Peter Ward]

One of the sky's most stunning vistas....and superbly rendered here.

Nice :thumbsup:

[RobF]

Very very nicely done Colin!

[JA]

Well done Colin. Excellent Image:thumbsup:

Best
JA

[Atmos]

Thanks ya’ll. This is one of my favourite looking areas of the Milky Way and one that I’ve tried imaging with a Sigma Art 85 two years ago but was never entirely happy with the contrast. There is something in large mosaics that wide fields just cannot compete with :thumbsup:

[Paul Haese]

Nice work Colin. The colour of this region is unmatched. Your rendering is very nice. Well done.

[kosborn]

Amazing image. That's a great part of the sky! What was the exposure/subs for each panel?

[topheart]

Hi Colin,
Congratulations on a superb rendition!
Cheers,
Tim

[strongmanmike]

Putting the tendency for this area to show subtle sky gradients and not knowing where these actually end and nebulosity starts, aside... :question:.....this is a fantastic image Col with beautiful rich colour and has a rather mesmerising feel to it while surfing around.

A most enjoyable view squire, very nicely done :thumbsup:

Mike

[multiweb]

Great colors Colin. Nice resolution too. :thumbsup:

[Placidus]

Exquisite beauty and a technical tour-de-force.

One to blow up to six feet on a side and print on aluminium.

[Ryderscope]

Sheesh! Stunning work.

[DJT]

Good Grief, that's stunning
Colours handled beautifully. So much going on.:thumbsup:

[billdan]

Excellent work Colin, you must have a lot of patience stitching 15 panels together. Whoever says DSLR's are redundant should have a look at this.

Cheers
Bill

[markas]

Great image of one of the best bits of the sky. You've caught this beautifully:thumbsup::thumbsup:


Mark

[Atmos]

I've gone and started from scratch again and I'm happier with where it is now. There was a blue gradient that was swamping the top of the frame and that has been removed to now show all of the fine dust... There is almost no part of the frame that doesn't contain some amount of dust! Feel like getting at it with a vacuum :lol:

Revised Version (https://www.astrobin.com/full/393730/C/)



I was both happy and not quite so happy with the colour but I am much happier with the new version :)



Every panel is 5x300s at ISO400 so 75 subs in total or 6.25 hours of exposure.



Thanks Tim :)



I knew there was some gradients that I wasn't overly happy with but I think in the new version those gradients have been eliminated and now we're left with just how dusty this regions really is!



Thanks Mark :thumbsup:



At full resolution it should be printable at 3x3m at 300 DPI :P





Thanks David & Rodney :thumbsup:



I'm still trying to figure out the best way of forming a mosaic but I feel like I'm slowly getting there :)



It is a great patch of sky with numerous bits that can be imaged all on their own.

[Retrograde]

Absolutely exquisite Colin! :eyepop:

[Decimus]

Fantastic image, Colin. Superb work.👌

[strongmanmike]

Interesting, quite a different result huh Col? Hard to process this area it would seem :question: there is more dust across the top of the latest version but the original is a little more impactful with more vibrant colour.

I hope to have a go at this field with the 16803 and FSQ this winter :thumbsup:

Mike

[alpal]

That's a great picture Colin.
It's definitely one to be printed in a super large size.


cheers
Allan

[rcheshire]

Beautiful work Colin.

[Atmos]

Thanks Pete & Richard :thumbsup:



I think the first version had a bit more contrast and pop because the background was darker and the dust was being suppressed. The colour vibrancy came from the processing. When processing each panel individually you get better colour vibrancy as it’s being processed at full resolution. The second version I used AstroPixelProcessor to mosaic the panels together prior to stretching and my 16GB of RAM only allows for 317mp mosaics. I will say however that the colour is more accurate with the second.

I think I’ll go at this again this year with an ASI094 (36.3MP full frame) for cooling and deeper integrations with proper Ha sensitivity. Your FSQ setup would be damn near perfect though :lol:





Thanks Allan and Rowland :thumbsup: