New Forest Observatory» Creating mosaics

EPOD – Brockenhurst church in the snow – large mosaic

Greg Parker — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 09:04:30 +0000

Today’s EPOD (Earth Science Picture of the Day) is a 16-frame mosaic of St. Nicholas’ church in Brockenhurst taken during the recent snow fall. This mosaic was stitched together using the amazing PTGui software package which does a great job of assembling (and blending) large mosaics (including deep-sky mosaics). Camera used was the Canon 5D MkII full frame DSLR and the amazingly sharp 50mm prime lens (possibly the cheapest and sharpest lens in the Canon range!). I was lucky enough to capture this image just a day or two before scaffolding was erected all around the church. Why scaffolding? Because some extremely low-life form decided that in order to fund this Christmas they would steal the lead off the church roof. Is nothing sacred? Apparently not in U.K. 2010. Thank you Jim for continuing to publish my work

The largest, highest resolution, deep-sky print to date

Greg Parker — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:36:44 +0000

Noel has just processed our largest deep-sky dataset to-date (there is a larger one waiting to be finished). This is the Cocoon nebula with the associated huge dark nebulosity. The picture below shows a print I just made on the HP Designjet 130 6-colour printer. You can tell from the filing cabinet that this is a fairly large print It actually measures 22.5 x 58 inches and is printed at 200DPI!! This is the biggest, highest resolution print I have made with the HP printer to date. This print will be available for sale shortly, but as it took nearly two hours to print out and consumed an outrageous quantity of ink – it won’t be cheap.

Galaxy wall mega poster – the NFO Spring mega-project of 2010

Greg Parker — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 20:11:31 +0000

Noel Carboni is currently assembling the NFO Spring mega project of 2010.

This is a massive mosaic of the Virgo/Coma galaxy cluster region centred on the famous Markarian Chain of galaxies. This mosaic is created from a number of frames taken with both the Sky 90 and Hyperstar III telescopes both using the SXVF-M25C one-shot colour camera, and the image reveals many hundreds of galaxies.

I shall be creating just a very few HUGE prints measuring some 5 feet in height and 6-7 feet in length which will be available for purchase. These will be extremely expensive to acquire (sorry), but they are totally unique high-resolution prints specifically designed for the corporate environment and with an extremely limited print run of just 25 prints!

Stay tuned to the New Forest Observatory blog to keep up to date with this, our most ambitious project to-date. If you would like to pre-order your massive “Galaxy Wall” print for your institution then please mail sales@newforestobservatory.com for more information – but please be quick, with only 25 prints in total, they will soon be snapped up!

M100 – left hand frame

Greg Parker — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:09:52 +0000

I took the frame to the left of M100 last night using a bit of dead-reckoning – and unbelievably I scored a perfect hit So the top two frames on the Markarian Chain mega-mosaic are now complete! The bottom mosaic around M87 is also done – so the last bit of work I am going to do on this one, having had a word with Noel, is to get some nice deep high-resolution data using the Hyperstar III, on the Chain itself. I daren’t say this half way through the day – but it actually looks like another clear night tonight – so you know what I’ll be doing. If it is clear, that’ll be something like 7 clear Moonless nights this month so far – I think that must be a record from when I started in September 2004. If I get any more clear nights this month (yes I’m now getting greedy) I will probably just try to add more and more good data to the Chain. Virgo is now making its way West and soon it will be too far over into the trees for me to get a good imaging session on it during a single evening – time to move onto something new, probably the goodies in the Ursa Major/Canes Venatici region.

M100 region now

Greg Parker — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:37:28 +0000

So last night was another unexpectedly clear night and I imaged the M100 region. I did not expect that this frame would fit onto the ultra-mega-Markarian Chain mosaic, but of course it does – perfectly – at the top. I now need to get the frame off to the left to complete the top part of the mosaic now – I can see this is going to be a never-ending job at this rate and poor old Noel will be adding frames to this tapestry for ever and a day.

Just to the right of M87 in Virgo

Greg Parker — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:56:00 +0000

This is another frame to add to the mega-mosaic that is the Markarian Chain region on the Coma/Virgo border. Just processed by Noel this is the region just to the right (West) of M87 and will make up one of three new frames taken to add to the bottom (South) of the already large Markarian Chain mosaic. With the M87 region added to the mosaic I will call it a day on this one – until I get the mini-WASP array up and running

Registar – registration software

Greg Parker — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:51:19 +0000

I have just purchased some incredibly powerful registration software called Registar. I played with the free download version for a few days before deciding I couldn’t live without this one and bought it today It is really useful to put together mosaics I have been working on for a couple of years – to see where I have gaps missing, but that’s the easy stuff. Registar will overlay frames obtained from different imaging systems so I can put Hyperstar I/H9C data together with Sky 90/M25C data together with Hyperstar III/M25C data – extremely powerful software indeed!!! I am going to have great fun with this over the next few days.

Waning harvest Moon 19th September 2008

Greg Parker — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:37:52 +0000

I don’t do planets, or the Moon, as my deep-sky setup is not geared up for these. However, last night’s Moon prompted me into action.

This Moon mosaic was taken with the Canon 40D fitted to a 5x Barlow which in turn went into the Sky 90. The whole lot sat on an unguided, non-tracking, camera tripod. I let the Moon drift past the frame and took images every few seconds. The movement of the Moon, plus the slow shutter speed of around 1/8 second means that none of the frames were particularly sharp – but it was an interesting exercise to see what is involved in getting a good image of the Moon.

Contrary to what common sense suggests – getting a good image of the Moon is not at all easy. For something that is so bright this is a bit of a mystery to me. It is suggested that the surface contrast is not too good either – but it’s plenty better than some of the nebulae I have photographed in my time. However there are a few simple rules, which if followed, should give you a nice image of the Moon – certainly better than the one I show here.

1) Use a long focal length so that will mean forming a mosaic. You have plenty of light don’t forget, so your exposure times won’t be prohibitive even if you’re working at f#30!!

2) Track your imaging setup to follow the Moon so that you won’t get motion blur during the exposure.

3) Focus is critical (when ever isn’t it?) so make sure that each frame you take is spot on in focus. If you have the equivalent of the “Live View” mode that the Canon 40D has, use it.

4) Keep noise to a minimum by using a low ISO number (I used ISO 100 for the accompanying image). Remember once again, you’ve got tons of light to play with – so make it work for you.

5) Take your mosaic allowing a good 30% overlap between adjacent frames.

6) Assemble the mosaic using Photoshop’s “Photomerge” function in CS3. Why make life difficult? Just open the files, press the button and let CS3 do all the work.

7) Apply some digital processing (maybe some sharpening and contrast enhancement) to boost the image.

8) Job done! Enjoy the fruits of your labour

By the way – the Moon last night was even more of a golden brown than I show in the above image.