Vela SNR Mega Mosaic

[Dave882]

Boldly (ie. stupidly/insanely) going where no c14 has gone before...

This is an accumulation of data that I started capturing about Oct/Nov last year, and pretty much how it went was that whenever the sky conditions were sub-par for planetary viewing I put the hyperstar on the c14 for an easy fall-back target, and well, we had lots of horrid conditions so I ended up accumulating a fair bit and I thought I'd set up a mosaic and turn it into a project.

Even though it was a side-project, its hard not to be just a little bit in awe of all the beauty in this area. With the Vela SNR (12,000 years young) & Gum12, the Pencil Nebula, Gum 17/19/20/23, the bowtie and so so much Ha & Oiii detail it's hard to pick a favourite view. The scale of this is epic and it's a rewarding target no matter what FL you're shooting at

This is a 24 panel mosaic (actually shot about 33hrs in total) in a mix of average to poor conditions. There's a couple of frames that are very poor with cloud/moon but just couldn't find any more sky-time (or will-power) to get any more data.

I must say, that the ASIAIR mosaic tool, combined with APP for stacking & assembly is absolutely brilliant and made the job quite manageable! But the data acquisition was easy compared to the processing of that data that almost did my head in due to the sheer size of the files and under-spec computers. I've finally found a bit of time this week to finish it off so here we are!

I've attached a thumbnail which really doesn't do the project any justice - but here's a slightly larger file (https://1drv.ms/i/s!ArpSiLT3VkGHiPQm6pOybmIaWsJKWw?e= 9IDezQ)

Due to the aggressive down-sizing of the data there was an inevitable loss in much detail, but I did process a few individual frames which I'll post in a bit as well.

C14 Hyperstar f1.9
Eq8 pro
ASI2600mc (IDAS NBZ dual band)
Guiding with guide scope & asi290mm
ASIAIR pro
APP & GIMP/LR & a smattering of Denoise

Thanks for looking

[Dave882]

A few individual frames and mini-mosaics (slightly less down-sampled)...

[AstroViking]

If I was to type what I am thinking, I'd be banned.

So you'll have to put up with some understatement... That is one jaw-dropping image, David, and I am very, very impressed with what you've achieved.

[Anth10]

That’s one helluva compilation there Dave- Wow!
You’ve certainly gone above and beyond with the sheer volume of data and number of frames for this mosaic.
I’m super impressed with the quality of the image given your acquisition and getting it to this stage- it must have been exhausting I can only imagine but hats off to you on a very fine result one which many would appreciate as you would no doubt.

Anthony

[strongmanmike]

Faaantastic Dave :clap: the big version was great to pan around, very enjoyable, looks very natural too, a clean well processed mosaic of one of the most fascinating areas of the sky, take a bow fella and thanks for posting! :thumbsup:

Mike

[Dave882]

Thanks guys much appreciated. Yep a mammoth amount of data (approx 225GB including processing data) that I found immensely satisfying transferring to the external drive. At some stage I’ll probably return to the raw mosaic for a repro cause I reckon there’s definitely room for improvement there but me and Vela have mutually agreed to see other people/targets for a while. Like maybe until I actually get a real wide-field setup…

[Craig_]

WOW! Amazing shot.

[Dave882]

Thanks mate

[gregbradley]

That's a stunner.

Well done. One of my favourite areas of the southern sky.

Greg.

[Startrek]

Dave,
Great work and superb images
That big C14 and Hyperstar certainly allows you so much flexibility in imaging all kinds of areas and objects up there
Well done for effort alone
Cheers
Martin

[Dave882]

Cheers Greg I agree it’s a stunning (and enormous) region! Sometimes while imaging I’d look up into Vela and imagine what it would be like to be able to see this region naked-eye stretching some 20x full moon widths…

[Dave882]

Cheers Martin. Yes I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to explore a variety of targets with this big ol’ girl. Sometimes it’s a bit of a fight but hey, that’s half the fun isn’t it :D

[Nikolas]

That's Awesome David glad you had decent days/nights to image this beauty

[Dave882]

Thanks mate.

[Stellarvariable]

That's fantastic! I've been wanting to do a mosaic like that for ages. Nice work!

[Kuz]

Beautiful capture . Top effort especially with that focal length

[charmec]

That looks excellent, great picture.

[Dave882]

Thanks Blake, Kuz, Manuel. Glad you liked it!

[Decimus]

:eyepop:This is an absolutely stunning image, David. A friend of mine is currently working on the same project but with a much smaller scope and wider field using 4 panel mosaic.

This is a candidate for a giant wall poster. Beautiful and inspiring work, David!

Cheers,
Richard

[Dave882]

Thanks Richard! Yeah I had some thoughts of maybe doing a big print but the enormous file sizes prevented me from keeping the full res for post processing. Think I’m happy with the screen pic. Definitely a more practical fl would be in the 200-300mm range. But my big girl still did pretty good I reckon :P

[CoolhandJo]

24 panel! thats dedication . looks amazing.

[matlud]

Amazing Dave -24 panels is an incredible processing feat. Very well done!
CS, Mat

[Spookyer]

Fantastic effort, have been planning this one for a couple of years but not good enough yet.

I didn't realise you could get such a good image with a colour camera?

[Addos]

This is really, really good Dave. From both a time/effort standpoint and the quality of the acquisition and resulting image. Such a large aperture at an incredibly high speed, and that collimation looks about as good as it gets.



Please get an Astrobin account, or something - I would love access to a higher res version of this :) Congrats.

[Dave882]

Thanks guys I really appreciate the comments!

Paul- cheers yeah it’s probably my biggest project to date but it did come together fairly quickly at only 1hr per frame (the advantage of 14” aperture I guess). It’s also nice when so many of the frames were beautiful in their own right to keep the project interesting.
Matt- thanks mate I have to confess I used your 2021 beautiful image of this region as a reference for framing and for processing quite a bit during this project :)
Brett- thanks yeah the modern dual narrow band filters can do wonders on these Ha / Oiii rich regions even with osc cameras. This is a great region to do a few shots and then expand to a mosaic as you have time.
Cheers Adam- yeah the alignment is a struggle sometimes but pretty happy with most of the frames overall. There were a few below-par but when downsampled I can get away with some errors here and there lol. No astrobin yet but did you see the link? - I think it’s about a 50mb file…

[oska]

That's another level Dave, I'm awestruck.

[Dave882]

Thanks mate for the compliments :)