Milkyway from Coona

[multiweb]

While Ross was shooting the pleiades I did a lot of panels in no particular order of the milkyway. This was shot with the SONY NEX-5 35mm stepped down to f5.6. I used the polarie so these are 3 min single exposures stiched together with registar and blended with PS.

There's a full res here (https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=6930D3AD12D5044C&id=6930D3AD12D5044C%21863#cid=6930D 3AD12D5044C&id=6930D3AD12D5044C%211285)that yields some details. The original is here (https://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pyGaWdWziWgde5bR8-AXKXkUicT5kCYkRqbE07f3b216r2Qq_W1MZ sQzbXKg9GiHZYNTuSTiCUxGdrlSyGNWe8Q/milkyway_55mm_coona_fff.jpg?psid=1)[13.5MB]. Incorrectly labelled 55mm.

I'm trying to plate solve the whole thing but haven't managed to yet. Will amend the post when I do.

I also have a Ha version shot with the QHY9/35mm which I'm still working on. Thanks for looking and enjoy the view. :thumbsup:

[Larryp]

Looks very nice, Marc!:thumbsup:

[pluto]

Looks great!

[atalas]

A great project and wonderfully done Marc!

[Leonardo70]

Congrats Marc ...amazing !!

All the best,
Leo

[Ross G]

Hi Marc,

An amazing feat....and I thought you were in your tent sleeping!

As well as looking fantastic it is so helpful for people like me as a map of the sky showing all the major objects and their spacing from each other.
Great for planning an imaging session of the Milky Way.

Thanks.

Ross.

[gregbradley]

Nice work Marc.

You got the Polarie nicely aligned there.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Thanks Larry. :thumbsup:


Thanks mate. :thumbsup:


Thanks a lot Louie. :thumbsup:


Thanks very much Leo. Glad you liked it. :thumbsup:


Thanks mate. :lol: No I was watching Jaws 3 on telly. Too cold outside :P


Thanks Greg. :thumbsup: Funny enough I didn't really align it. :shrug: Must have been one of those freak alignment where you're spot out of the box. I did a 7min test sub the first night though with minimal trailing to test.

[troypiggo]

That's awesome! Even Corona Australis nebulosity is clearly visible.

[Stevec35]

That's a nice milky way shot there Marc. Sharp, detailed and very well processed.

Cheers

Steve

[mithrandir]

Marc, plate solving probably won't work. When the software stitches the frames it has to straighten the lens distortion and that throws out all the object relationships that plate solving requires. It's not as bad with long focal length lenses as with it is with short ones but still not wonderful. You could solve each frame and try to mosaic the results.

[multiweb]

Thanks a lot Troy. :thumbsup: Yeah it is too.


Thanks for the feedback Steve. :thumbsup:



Thanks Andrew. You're right. UNIMAP seems to lose it. I'll try your suggestion.

[marco]

Lovely mosaic Marc, you stitched the different panels remarkably well (not an easy task, in particular on large fields) and the whole image is a pleasure to look at full resolution :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Cheers
Marco

[mithrandir]

Marc, I tried it in astrometry.net and that failed, and it will usually solve things UniMap can't without a good initial plate centre.

[Tom Davis]

Great image!

-Tom

[ourkind]

beautiful!

[multiweb]

Thanks Marco. :thumbsup: I have to admit I am a little lost with DSLR processing still. There's a lot more corner aberrations and a fair bit of overlap is needed. Haven't quite figured out the stacking either as they're not FITs. A bit out of my comfort zone.


Thanks Andrew. Maybe the starfield is too dense. I'll try to do the panels individually then register the solved plates onto the original see what come out of it. It'd be cool though because the constellations would start to appear as well.


Thanks a lot Tom. :thumbsup:


Thanks Carlos. :thumbsup:

[mithrandir]

What are you stacking with Marc? Sony's software will convert ARW to TIFF. Nebulosity will turn TIFF into FITS, and it might turn ARW into FITS.
AutoPano will stack JPEG, TIFF and some RAWs (not sure about ARW). It also handles the lens distortions. Not exactly cheap, except compared to anything from Adobe.

[RickC]

Great image Marc, sounds like you had a lot of fun at Coonabarabran
Looking forward to the ha image

Richard

[David Fitz-Henr]

Another great mosaic Marc - seamlessly stitched together! ... and with a 35mm DSLR this time - you are certainly getting a broad range of experience! Apart from some distortions at the extreme mid/upper left, the stars look quite good; considering the short fl / wide angle of these lenses it is an excellent job that you've done here. I'll be interested to see the plate solve if you can get it to work.

[strongmanmike]

Yeh, this looks pretty good Marc, shooting from Coona huh? very cool, better than Wallaroo even :thumbsup:

Mike

[multiweb]

With the NEX-5 I get ARW SONY files out of the Cam that I usually load in lightroom to color balance then export to TIFF 16bits and do my stitching in Registar. Then I go in PS and cut off all the chonky stars in the corners of all the panels before blending everything in.

But I think I should try to stack and data reject at least a few of the panels before stitching them to reduce the noise. Will probably repro and try get a better SNR.

[multiweb]

Thanks Richard. :thumbsup: Yes it was a lot of fun and we had 4 consecutive clear nights. One with great seeing, the others average but always pretty good transparency. Two nights got pretty cold though as it iced up. Must have been below zero.

The trip to go there wasn't much fun though as I left Friday morning at 8:00am. I couldn't go through Katoomba because of the freakin' snow and had to back track to Bells Line of Road backway to Lithgow to be stopped again by the coppers. At that stage I was ready to go home but decided to try once more and I followed Putty Road all the way via Singleton then back across to Coona. That was a bloody long day driving but Friday night was sparkling so all forgotten.


Thanks David. :thumbsup: Some of the edges are still bad as I had no overlap to correct. I stepped the lens down but it seems not enough. I'll try to platesolve this week-end.


Thanks Mike. :thumbsup: Yeah I did the trip with Ross, Louie and Colin. We had a ball and clear skies. Wallaroo's probably a lot closer and more accessible though. Off the freeway so to speak.

[RickS]

That worked really well, Marc! What a fantastic vista.

[multiweb]

Thanks a lot Rick. :thumbsup:

[stevous67]

Pro effort Marc, loved it to look through!

Cheers,

Steve

[pvelez]

That is certainly worth the trip to Coona. Great stuff

Pete

[multiweb]

Thanks a lot Steve. :thumbsup: Glad you liked it. I'll probably repro, stack and try to get rid of some of the noise.


Thanks a lot Pete. :thumbsup: Yeah, Coona never disappoints.

[avandonk]

Very nice image Marc. As you know I really like a widefield.

I generated a map with Star Atlas Pro and used it to make a rectilinear version of your image. I used Registar to do this.


Here 10MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2012_10/milkyway_M2.jpg

This should plate solve? as now there are no distortions?

You can also use it as a template for any further images.

Hope this helps.

Bert

[multiweb]

Thanks for the file Bert. I'll certainly use it as a scaffold. :thumbsup: Looks like UNIMAP is actually registering now but it crashes shortly after. I think I'll cut the file in smaller panels and platesolve them separately, then use you big file to register them back.

[mithrandir]

astrometry.net still can't solve it Bert.

UniMap did but I had to restrict it to the Tycho2 catalog and mag 8 otherwise it ran out of memory and crashed.
RA centre 18:12
Dec Centre -24:00
Field 45:00x22:30
Detected 49432 objects (after blocking out an area around the tree).
Matched 7810 stars
Catalog stars in the area 71673
Deep sky objects 169851

It doesn't want to save the annotated image.

Marc, you should get UniMap to work if you use those ra/dec/field values as hints.

[multiweb]

Excellent! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: Will try that in the morning.

[avandonk]

Here is a better version of your image Marc. 10MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2012_10/milkyway_M2.jpg


Here is a map with your image 5MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2012_10/MAP_10.jpg


The previous image was suspect. I have changed it to the newer version.

It is far better now as I included far more stars in the map for better registration.

Bert

[multiweb]

Looks cool - thanks again for you time mate.

[alexch]

It is a nice image indeed, Marc! And a thanks for a very useful tip, Bert!

Bert, what projection did you use in Star Atlas Pro?

Bert, I have Registar but don't have Star Atlas and was wondering if you could upload just the star maps for the southern, central and northern parts of the Milky Way so I could try to "rectilinearise" my widefield images?

Thanks,
Alex

[avandonk]

Alex Stellarium works just as well and it is free. So does Starry Night Pro.

Bert

[avandonk]

Marc it was no trouble as I was sitting bored under very cloudy skies in Melbourne!

Bert

[alexch]

Thanks, Bert.

The sky projection is important and in order for the image to be rectilinear, I think the sky needs to be in gnomonic projection (called "Perspective" in Stellarium). However, such projection considerably deforms the aspect of the sky for large field angles, and the image centre needs to be carefully chosen in Stellarium.

What sky projection did you use for the Star Atlas Pro and Stellarium maps?

Alex

[avandonk]

In Stellarium I used 'Stereographic Projection'. In Star Atlas Pro I was in Star Atlas mode. The clutter of labels can make SAP maps tricky to register.

Bert

[alexch]

Correct me if I am wrong, but then the resulting images would not be rectilinear (at least for Steallrium) because the stereographic projection is much closer to the fish-eye than rectilinear.

[prokyon]

Very nice! It is a lot of work to do that, respect! It is a pleasure to watch it.

[multiweb]

Iz simple, two words: keep it real! ;) Thanks mate. :thumbsup: