The big picture

[Peter Ward]

My Milkyway H-Alpha project has hit a couple of snags.

Weather, PC file size limitations and pushing PC's to their limits to process 9GB file sizes....anyway despite needing to redo some panes in the mosaic (now up to 27) the result so far can be see here...

http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/gallery65.html

[TrevorW]

That's huge well done

[jase]

Certainly taking shape now Peter! :thumbsup: Still some work to be done by the looks of the shadows not being consistent across the panels, mostly on the left side of the presented image. Huge field of view. Don't chew off more than you can swallow. ;) As you know, matching contrast/brightness is the relatively easy part...adding RGB is a completely different matter.

[multiweb]

Very cool :thumbsup:

[Peter Ward]

Thanks Jase....I frankly think RGB is not going to happen to this dataset.

It would need a much more efficient lay-out and re-shoot. (so far it has been very foolishly scatter-gunned :) )

At 16bit LRGB .psb format I'm estimating the file size to be +60Gb. An 8 core Mac might just cope... As is, FAT32 on the PC gave up long ago!

But it has provided a really interesting road map of objects I'd like to point the 14"RC at....

BTW...again, well done on the Malin award, well deserved!

[DavidU]

My my that's big ! Excellent piece of work Peter.An awful lot of data:eyepop:
You need a dual i7 running multiple SS drives through Raid @64 bit with 16G ram:lol:

[Miaplacidus]

That's brilliant, Peter. Superb effort. Thanks for sharing it with us. A daunting project, to be sure. Good luck with the rest of it.
How many degrees across is that patch of sky, anyway?
(Nice to see you traded in your avatar for a more economical model. Is that a post-GFC thing?)
Regards,
Brian.

[seeker372011]

very nice- and see some nice possible targets here and there

[rat156]

Hi Peter,

Again, outstanding, I'm enjoying watching you put this one together.

I have an 8 core Mac, I'll lend you my Ferrari (of computers) if you lend me yours! I have a track day in Winton on 8th August, I could meet you there, I'll bring my Mac, you can process away all weekend, I'll even let you drive around the Alfa if you like ;)

Oh, BTW, you missed a couple of bits...

Cheers
Stuart

[Peter Ward]

:lol: Yep I know...wasn't too fussed fixing it, as I need to replace a few panes.

Might pass on the drive day....

I don't understand why no-one seems to like my old Morrie avatar...it had twin SU carbies...and a back seat! :D

[Octane]

Goodness me, that's enormous.

An excellent map to pick and choose narrower field targets.

Well done!

Go on, add the colour. I'll loan you a Sun Microsystems M5000 machine from work to do the processing on. :P

H

[Martin Pugh]

Huge effort there Peter and it looks great.

cheers
Martin

[wysiwyg]

Peter,

Firstly, well done on such an ambitious project.

Its funny as only recently I was just discussing with a felow astrophotographer how the number of people using FSQ's and large format cameras has increased in the last few years. There is certainly no shortage of them, thats for sure.

I guess one way to speed this project up is to invite fellow astrophotographers to submit their widefields images in Ha to a single website. Esentially speeding up the process of collecting enough data to be able to disaply the entire Milky Way.
People would simply pick a Mosaic Frame (To reduce duplication) and submitt.

Then this not only becaomes a SH project but also a Northern Hemisphere possibly.
In no time it would be possible to display the largest photographic record of our night skies.

Eventually LRGB data could also be added.

I have always found astronomy books disjointed, just giving you single images of parts of the sky but not really giving the reader any idea what the object is in relation to in the sky.
This could potentially be used as a very usefull educational tool.

Let me know if you would like to discuss this further as I would be very interested in participating in something like this.

Cheers
Mark