The Blue Horsehead

[gregbradley]

This is panel 1 of a mosaic for this area.

It is LRGB 90 60 60 60 with a FLI PL16803 and FSQ106EDX and reducer.
Using Baader LRGB filters.

It is near the more well known Rho Ophiuchi.

It looks like a reasonable weather forecast for this week so I am hoping to add more panels and create a mosaic for a change.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/125328106

Greg.

[h0ughy (David)]

lovely sea horse! Look forward to seeing this mosaic take shape Greg

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Yes, that's a spectacular field mate, look forward to the final result

Mike

[Octane (Humayun)]

Fantastic, Greg!

This was actually going to be my first target with the new gear.

H

[richardo (Rich)]

Very well done Greg!
This is an impressive image and object for sure.

Certainly look forward to the mosaic

Rich

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Very nice Greg! Well done!

Cheers, Marcus

[Hagar (Doug)]

Lovely start to what looks like being a great image Greg. Great field with the dust standing out beautifully.

[batema (Mark)]

What an amazing object and it is in scorpio. I would love to have a go at this and would be using a W/O Flt 110 with a Canon 400d. Any suggestions of exposure times. Beautiful image. Well done.

Mark

[TrevorW]

Yep can see the horse head in this one well done !!

[multiweb (Marc)]

Pretty cool Greg. Lovely colors and awesome details. Very 3D.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

lovely sea horse! Look forward to seeing this mosaic take shape Greg

Its clear tonight so I'll do another panel. I just hope I can stitch them together. There's some new software that helps with mosaics isn't there?

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Yes, that's a spectacular field mate, look forward to the final result

Mike

Thanks Mike. Hopefully I'll be able to shoot most of it this week.

Originally Posted by Octane

Fantastic, Greg!

This was actually going to be my first target with the new gear.

H

Its an interesting area for sure.

Originally Posted by richardo

Very well done Greg!
This is an impressive image and object for sure.

Certainly look forward to the mosaic

Rich

Thanks Rich.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Very nice Greg! Well done!

Cheers, Marcus

Thanks Marcus. I hope I can do the mosaic processing. They are pretty tricky.

Originally Posted by Hagar

Lovely start to what looks like being a great image Greg. Great field with the dust standing out beautifully.

Thanks Doug.

Originally Posted by batema

What an amazing object and it is in scorpio. I would love to have a go at this and would be using a W/O Flt 110 with a Canon 400d. Any suggestions of exposure times. Beautiful image. Well done.

Mark

A DSLR would depend on your light pollution. If your skies are dark then I'd go ISO800 and as long as your mount tracks well like 10 minutes. If light pollution then shorter like 4-5mins.

Originally Posted by TrevorW

Yep can see the horse head in this one well done !!

Yes it not as obtuse as some of these names are.

Originally Posted by multiweb

Pretty cool Greg. Lovely colors and awesome details. Very 3D.

Thanks Marc. Do you know of any good mosaic software?

Greg.

[RobF (Rob)]

Awesome. I wasn't familiar with this one - beautifully rendered even at this stage.

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

very nice-the horse really pops-unlike that stupid running chicken thingy , its obvious why this reflection neb is called the blue horse

look forward to the finished product, sure that finished mosaic will be a humdinger

[Paul Haese]

Nice looking image Greg. That whole region seems to have a lot of reflection nebulosity there. Well done.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Thanks Marc. Do you know of any good mosaic software?

Well there are a few around. I heard a lot of good about autopano giga . Personally I only use registar for registration and load everything in place in PS so I don't even use photomerge. All you have to do is make sure your panels are normalised the same in CCDStack or Maxim prior to save them as scaled TIFFs then you won't have any problem with gradients anywhere.

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Well there are a few around. I heard a lot of good about autopano giga . Personally I only use registar for registration and load everything in place in PS so I don't even use photomerge. All you have to do is make sure your panels are normalised the same in CCDStack or Maxim prior to save them as scaled TIFFs then you won't have any problem with gradients anywhere.

Don't know about Giga, but regular AutoPano doesn't do TIFF or FITS.

Process the individual frames with your tool of choice. They don't have to have the brightness adjusted to be identical, close will do.
Export them as a format it likes (like jpg without any compression).
Use ExifTool to add the focal length tag (only really required if different frames have different focal lengths, you can force a focal length if they are all the same).
Feed to AutoPano.
Wander off for a beverage.

Can't be too bad. The Iceman uses it too.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by RobF

Awesome. I wasn't familiar with this one - beautifully rendered even at this stage.

Thanks Rob.

Originally Posted by seeker372011

very nice-the horse really pops-unlike that stupid running chicken thingy , its obvious why this reflection neb is called the blue horse

look forward to the finished product, sure that finished mosaic will be a humdinger

Thanks. I just hope it isn't too huge a task.

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Nice looking image Greg. That whole region seems to have a lot of reflection nebulosity there. Well done.

Thanks Paul. Its amazing what is around the popular objects when taken with a deep image.

Originally Posted by multiweb

Well there are a few around. I heard a lot of good about autopano giga . Personally I only use registar for registration and load everything in place in PS so I don't even use photomerge. All you have to do is make sure your panels are normalised the same in CCDStack or Maxim prior to save them as scaled TIFFs then you won't have any problem with gradients anywhere.

Thanks for the tip Marc. Only comment there is using scaled tiffs in CCDstack tends to black clip the image a bit.

Greg

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Only comment there is using scaled tiffs in CCDstack tends to black clip the image a bit.

Indeed. It certainly does clip if you're not careful. As a rule I always lower the blackpoint 100 points and raise the white point 100 points too to give me plenty of histogram prior to save any 16Bits TIFF from CCDStack. Once you're aware of it, it's not a problem really. Once you're finished with Maxim or CCDStack there's no point carrying 16 or 32bits FITS around with an histogram as wide as a 4 lanes highway IMO. Scaled TIFFs are more than adequate to register for mosaics and star from in PS.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Indeed. It certainly does clip if you're not careful. As a rule I always lower the blackpoint 100 points and raise the white point 100 points too to give me plenty of histogram prior to save any 16Bits TIFF from CCDStack. Once you're aware of it, it's not a problem really. Once you're finished with Maxim or CCDStack there's no point carrying 16 or 32bits FITS around with an histogram as wide as a 4 lanes highway IMO. Scaled TIFFs are more than adequate to register for mosaics and star from in PS.

How do you lower the black point in CCDstack? Using adjust display and the top slider?

Greg.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

How do you lower the black point in CCDstack? Using adjust display and the top slider?

Greg.

That's right. Background slider down and Maximum slider up. Then 'Save Scaled Data > This' - Save as type: TIFF 16 bit