[RobF (Rob)]

Thanks for the kind comments everyone. Glad to see you've had a bit of the fun viewing it I did collecting and assembling. I should have said in the 1st post this data was all binnedx2 - another first for me, which required new darks/flats etc but all character building stuff. I went through quite a few phases with this - initial grand plan to cover H's work in 6 frames, followed by the realisation in the cold hard light of day the overlap wouldn't be enough, then after collection 4 frames (and succeeding in getting the red frames to fit) thinking "whatever - I'll just go for it". 6 frames would just about cover this field of view, but I learned a lot about composiing and navigating around mosaic frames along the way. You can get an idea of the number of false starts by looking at uncropped mosaic assembled here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/UserRob...64329431758866

Originally Posted by Suzy

Beautiful pics Rob.
But if I may add my 2cents worth ... it would have been fabulous to see one of those pics in the mosaic showing the two beautiful star clusters sitting very close to E.Carinae. Just completes the mosias I think. Anyway, just my thoughts. I love all your work and am one of your biggest fans.

Thanks for having a look and commenting honestly Suzy. I actually agree whole-heartedly. One of the things I love about Humayun's pic is the grand field of view that DOES capture Southern Pleidaes, but also creates great drama by including enough of the darker sky around the neb. I just wasn't game to go to a 3rd column of data though after the adventures I describe above. Maybe one day. If you look carefully at the star spikes on the right hand side versus left they've actually rotated to reflect the curvature of the wide field. It took me 2 weeks to figure out that PixInsight can actually handle this by registering against a master artificially generated starfield. Anyway, thanks for the kudos. Head now returning to normal size

Originally Posted by Octane

I'm at St Leonards train station viewing on my iPhone, but, that looks stirling to me.

If I may, a touch more brightness (perhaps 2/3rds of a stop) and a smidgen contrast would really finish it off.

Fabulous image, Rob. I just love your star colours.

H

The wonders of modern Apple gadgets! Thanks for checking it out H. I honestly wouldn't have been patrolling this area in such detail if you hadn't made my chin hit the desk back in early Feb. Thanks re stars - this is the first time I've separately tried to do anything to my stars. I softened them a little using morphology function, boosted sat, then blended that back into the main image so as to not overdo. I've still got lots to learn to get anywhere near the "tak" stars you, Marcus and others make look so damned easy....

Sorry if I keep harping on about your Eta here, but it really did affect me strongly - so just telling the truth.

As for brightness/contrast, I'm way behind your deftness tweaking those final "big picture" settings. I don't think there's any shortcut for taking and tweaking LOTS of pics to get a feel for it. I might revist after I've had a few early nights to top my sleep up again.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Overal it looks pretty good Roberto and well done on the mosaic it looks ok too, you are one up on me there still ...I'm a chicken ...and I have a busy and heavy portable rig so multiple frame projects over multiple nights are rather unappealing

Mike

Cheers Mike. With my relatively portable rig its pretty easy to plonk it on marked tiles in my backyard. I was able to leave the scope up over 3 nights for most of this which made it easier. I should have collected more data, but same old story for me - I wasn't sure I could make it work, so I wasn't going to spend forever on what was really "proof of concept". I'll happily swap rigs though if you want to be more portable

Originally Posted by multiweb

Well that's beautiful Rob. You did a grand job.

Thanks Marc. Pretty happy chappy with this one

Originally Posted by spearo

a lot of work went into that!

I like the framing!
well done
frank

It wouldn't have been chosen so well if Humayun hadn't given a lesson in composition for his is the truth Frank. Wish I could have snuck in the bottom of the neb and IC2602 to boot though. I thought about getting more data, but I'm all mosaic'd out at the moment

Originally Posted by Stevec35

The full view looks great Rob and I like the star colours a lot.

Cheers

Steve

Thanks Steve - I was trying to make them nice and rich without overdoing it

Originally Posted by astroron

Nice work Rob,splendid rendition
cheers

Thanks for commenting Ron. I had to make do with staring at a screen last night rather than breathing in fresh air under clear skies