Rho Ophiuchi Mosaic

[RobF]

15 frame mosaic of the Rho Oph area. Never had the right camera gear to do justice to this widefield, and was constantly frustrated when shooting my FSQ field of view at small parts of it. Decided to shoot a 3x3 mosaic, which turned into a 3x4, which then required another 3 frames to tame nasty diffraction spikes from Antares.
All up 3 winters-worth of imaging from dark Leyburn skies (2017-2019). Thank goodness for PixInsight's mosaic tools and John Murphy's Photometric mosaic script. Most individual frames are around 7x5mins of L, R, G and B data, so its not super deep, but happy with the final resolution. Some of the final frames had as many as 22 frames/filter when had bit more time and clear skies. Won't be doing a 15 frame mosaic again anytime soon though :rofl:

QHY9/FSQ106ED @F5/HEQ5Pro
542 x 5min frames in the end = approx 45hrs of data
Higher res Astrobin available here: https://astrob.in/sxvmsm/0/

Thanks for checking it out :)

[JA]

Amazing to behold Rob. Excellent - :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Best
JA

[Dave882]

Holy cow that’s incredible!! The colour, detail and clarity, even zoomed right in is amazing. Wow that really is an epic project but you’ve managed something really incredible. Hope u got space on your wall. Well done!!

[RobF]

Thanks for the encouragement :)



Thanks Dave - Sort of fitted this in around other imaging whenever Milky Way was high and didn't have a single target in my sights. Still had some stiching gradients, but the latest colour cal and mosaic blending tools in Pixinsight really helped. Got pretty excited last month when finally got the last of the RGB frames stitched and realised it might just work after all :D

[LonelySpoon]

Beautiful, Rob.

One of my favourite areas.

Well done.

Neville
LSO

[strongmanmike]

Wow, really well done Rob, lots of work (three years worth huh?!!..awesome!) and great processing for a quality and I'd imagine, very satisfying result :thumbsup:

Mike

[RobF]

Thanks Neville and Mike. Have admired posts by so many of this area over the years, but you never really feel like you've checked out an object/region until agonised over the processing and explored every little corner.

M4/Antares region also a bit of a sentimental fav - still clear memories of a teenage Rob checking this glob out in the middle of winter from the back of my Grandparent's house through 4" F/10 reflector. No colour, but endless pinpoint stairs - won't ever forget that :)