Orion, deep and wide

[Geochron (Jon)]

Well it seemed like a great idea at the time....LOL

Here is my 64 panel mosaic of Orion using a RASA-8 and ASI2600MC!

https://astrob.in/s770bi/B/

Full, technical details are on the Astrobin link but, in brief, it was actually relatively straightforward to acquire the data (and only about 20 hours of subs) but subsequently quite an ordeal - and a massive learning curve - to process the final image.

I have had a hard time getting this from the multi-gigabyte original down to a size that seemed respectable even for Astrobin so please ignore the thumbnail presented here and head straight to that 'still not very high res actually' version on Astrobin.

I'm still not entirely sure that I really achieved what I intended here - from a distance, the mosaic looks very dark and lacking in stars (and actually not very interesting). It is only really when you start to zoom in that you get to appreciate some of the richness of the entire field. There are also some rather nice unexpected gems in there e.g. the tiny Abell-13 planetary nebula (you will have to hunt to find it)

Jon

[Bodon (Steve)]

Thats a lot of photos Jon The ol PC feels it thats for sure. I end up doing them in 16bit for ease. Very nice mate.

[AstroViking (Steve)]

Bloody hell, that's dedication to the cause...

Excellent image, and so much stuff to see, too.

[gregbradley]

64 panels. that must be a first.

A terrific widefield. It displays that iconic area in great detail. Such a diverse area.

what is the name of that nebula up at the top?

Greg.

[Geochron (Jon)]

thanks everyone..

Greg - the huge hydrogen cloud at the top is part of SH2-264. Below is a map of all the features in this image which will also help in locating Abell 13 (for anyone interested).

Steve - 16 bit would certainly be nice but I don't think that Astro Pixel Processor allows anything other than 32 bit when stacking, although I do normally export 16 bit TIFF for further work in Photoshop.