Milky Way - Galactic Centre

[Ryderscope]

I managed to capture another panel on my Milky Way panorama during the recent new moon observing weekend at Wiruna.

The image now extends further along to the north and is orientated around the Galactic Centre. An annotated copy is also included that shows the major deep sky objects and identifies the Galactic Centre, the location of the massive black hole around which our galaxy is rotating. The annotated copy also identifies some of the main brighter named stars.

I’ve included links below to the Astrobin page for the image as well as links directly to the marked up copy. It is worth taking the time to scan through the annotated version as well as the main image. Might be a good source for identifying some imaging targets maybe?

Link to Astrobin post here (https://astrob.in/kngqdt/0/)(click on image for access to higher resolution).

Direct link to annotated copy. (https://www.astrobin.com/full/kngqdt/B/)

Clear skies,
Rodney

[glenc]

Lots of nice nebulae there Rodney.

[Addos]

Very nice Rod! I like the starglow around the main structures, excellent!

[Dave882]

Just love it! Really visually striking from a far, and stacks of detail when you look closer. That needs to be hanging on someone’s wall

[Ryderscope]

Thanks Glen/Adam/David. The wall poster is being followed up :)

[ChrisD]

That's an extraordinary image Rodney! :thumbsup:
Great colour matching for a mosaic.

To see my favourite, Rho Ophiuchi, sitting on top there. A while back I used a 72mm refractor and needed a 6 six panel mosaic to fit it all in, really gives me a sense of the vast scale you're dealing with here.

Please tell me how you did this?

Chris

[JA]

WOW Rodney - you got it all. Well done :thumbsup::thumbsup:

Best
JA

[Ryderscope]

Many thanks for the kind words.
An overview of the method used to compose this image:

Hardware:

Canon 60Da
Samyang f2.8 manual lens (set at f5.6)
Skywatcher Star Adventurer Mount


Software:

Backyard EOS (image capture)
Pixinsight (pre and post processing
PTGui (stitching the panels)


Process steps:

Data was captured over three panels with approximately 50% overlap between the panels.
Each panel was comprised of 10 subs at 180 seconds per sub.
30 dark frames
Pre processing in Pixinsight for calibration, integration and registration.
Output from preprocessing was three masters (Panels 1,2 &3)
Preliminary processing in Pixinsight to normalise the three panels
Save as TIFF files and transfer to PTGui
Stitch panels in PTGui to create panorama
Save and open in Pixinsight
Post processing in Pixinsight


CS,
Rodney

[petershah]

wow....thats beautiful :thumbsup:

[Ryderscope]

Thank you Peter.

[Paul Haese]

That looks really nice Rodney. The colour is well balanced and looks very natural without being overwhelmed by any one particular colour.

[Retrograde]

Very cool Rodney, that's a great panorama.

I've tried stacking tracked exposures through my Samyang 14mm but the stack from Deep Sky Stacker looked awful. I think I tried once with Sequator and it wasn't much better. Perhaps stopping the lens down like you did might make a difference? Anyway you've shown what can be achieved. :thumbsup:

[Ryderscope]

Thanks Paul, I'm glad that you picked up on the colour as I did vacillate considerably over the colour balance in this image. Get the colours ok whilst looking natural can be quite a challenge.



Thanks Pete, stick with the Samyang lens as it can work well and, as indicated, it does benefit from stepping down the lens some. PTGui is a good application for stitching though one does have to pay for the licence. The Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) is a freebie and can work well in some case so is also worth a try.

CS,
Rodney

[gregbradley]

Superb Rodney.

I love these sort of shots.

tight stars to the corners. Hard to achieve with widefield lenses. The APS sized sensor helps a lot there.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Well worth the extra frame Rod. It's now the same FOV as my schoolboy effort from 40 years ago, very nostalgic for me, thanks :).

Ah huh!..I know what you will be doing now, though...adding the summer side of the galaxy ;) :thumbsup:

Mike

[Ryderscope]

Thanks Mike and Greg. Getting the summer side of the galaxy sounds tempting. Make me wonder how far I can keep this going :question: You’ve planted a seed Greg re: using the lens on an APS-C sensor. Makes me wonder what would happen if I paired the Samyang 14mm lens with my ASI6200 full frame camera. This would give a 104d FOV at an image scale of 55”/px :eyepop: I expect the results would be sub optimal but hey, we are in this hobby for fun, yes :D