Gigapan Test Image

[Atmos]

I know people love having big images that they can look around so I thought I'd upload where I am up to processing wise as of a few days ago.

Link to Gigapan (http://gigapan.com/gigapans/217421)

I'm thinking about recapturing the entire bottom section to fix up the visible "gradients". The problem is that it isn't a gradient in the background but in the stars as these panels were captured a bit too close to the horizon. In Sept 2018 I was in a rush to try to finish the capturing side of it and started venturing too close to the horizon and this is the result.

Anyway, hope you enjoy zooming around the GigaPan!

P.S.
The black spots are where I've not cropped well and need to go back and restack the subs to fix it. As I am going I'm creating synthetic star fields of each region and using distortion correction so that every frame is astrometrically correct. It does mean that if I don't crop things correctly... Well... You get the idea ;)

[Ryderscope]

That’s is very impressive Colin and I really like the Gigapan resource. Definitely something that I am going to explore for a large mosaic that I have been working on. Nice work :thumbsup:

[codemonkey]

That is super cool, Colin. Congrats!

[JA]

That's exceptional Colin.
Well done :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Best
JA

[Geoff45]

Impressive Colin. Hours of fun to explore there. I like your idea of a long term themed project rather than jumping from object to object. Something for more of us to consider.

[Andy01]

Gosh that is impressive work Colin - Well done! :thumbsup:

[SimmoW]

That's cool Colin, lovely to pan around with such detail. I know it's only early, but maybe you should explain the equipment and processing more in the site description section?

[RobF]

Do keep sharing update. Amazing...!

[Atmos]

Thanks everyone, it really is a labour of love :lol: Now if only I could get someone to do it for me :rofl:



Do it do it do it!



I've go a few hundred hours of data on this so far but there is a fair bit more I'd like to continue gathering in the next month or two weather permitting. It's worthwhile doing some larger projects :)



It's been taken with my Sky Rover 130mm refractor and a D810 so each panel is 3ºx2º.
Processing, well that's a different kittle of fish altogether! Every individual panel gets stacked separately. I'm then using AstroPixelProcessor to create mini 3x3 mosaics as a way of removing large scale gradients and doing some field curvature correction. I then open the resulting files in PixInsight, create synthetic star fields and extract the individual fields back out from the 3x3 mosaic so that large scale gradients have been removed along with now having no field curvature.
Every panel then have exactly the same processing done to it so that when I use AutoPano Giga to recreate the mosaic again everything is gradient free and has the same processing done to them.

Where I've become unstuck with the bottom of the mosaic here is that the frames themselves were captured <30º above the horizon and the FOV is large enough that atmospheric refraction can be seen within the individual frames. So I'm thinking I'll have to recapture parts of this again just to remove the star colour gradients because I cannot fix that through processing. Very high airmass is a real pain!

[rustigsmed]

awesome work Colin :thumbsup:

[ChrisV]

I feel like I'm up there gigapanning around !

[multiweb]

Geez.... that's a monumental task to get all those panels together. Really like the zoomify thing. :thumbsup:

[CalvinKlein]

This is one of the most spectacular images I've ever seen Colin. I enjoy doing very widefield mosaics myself but using much larger individual panes.

Can I ask a few questions ...
1 - Where are you taking the images from (so I can get an idea of the light pollution you are dealing with)
2 - What software do you use for pointing the telescope and working out the overlap ? I use Sequence Generator Pro for small mosaics but it doesnt work at all for large ones (a known issue)
3- You mention that you had issues with some frames being below 30 degrees and specifically attribute it to the airmass. If you were in a very dark location with low light-pollution near the horizon would you get a much better result ?

Thanks, Kelvin

[Atmos]

Thanks :)
I do plan on eventually doing a zooming thing on the finished project but that's still quite some time off and I still have no idea how to do it at a higher resolution yet. Will cross that bridge when I get to it.


Thanks Kelvin, there is just something about the level of contrast that a mosaic brings that cannot be captured in any other way. Sure, they're a lot of work but they're worth it :)

1. Most of it has been taken from my dark site in Heathcote, Victoria but last year I did a few trips up central NSW to get away from the perpetual Victorian cloud.

2. I've been using SGP for image capture and do want to move over to Voyager in the future for it's great focusing routines. As for creating the mosaic, I do that in TheSkyX. As you've pointed out, the FramingMosaicWizard doesn't go well wit larger mosaics. I've found that over 15º of field SPG dies on my laptop but TSX allows for easy and instant mosaics to be created. It did take quite a lot of work to figure out how to import the coordinates outputted by TSX into SGP. After I figured it out it took about 10 minutes to convert the TSX file into one that SGP could recognise. SGP also only allows for about 50 targets to be imported at once otherwise it crashes so I create a nightly target list.

3.
I didn't keep any of the really bad frames but below 25º it's possible to see atmospheric refraction as a VERY visible thing when blinking frames. Stars can move a few arcminutes!
Sky darkness has nothing to do with this as light pollution doesn't have any play with the amount of atmosphere that you're looking through. There is only two ways to beat high air mass, shoot from a mountain top in Chile or shoot higher in the sky (don't shoot below 30º).

[CalvinKlein]

Thanks very much Colin. That's most helpful in a few different ways. I worked out that your 650mm FL Sextuplet and D810 has the same FoV as my ASI183MC and my 120-300mm Duo-Deca-Sextuplet at 235mm. :P But I think i'll keep practicing with my 135mm Samyang for now.