A really famous combination and if I had a scope with a wider field of view then this would have been an excellent and fairly straightforward single target. I was going to have to bring these two together as a mosaic, my second attempt at a mosaic, my first dubious attempt is here.
The following is the N.I.N.A framing of what I was hoping for:-
N.I.N.A Framing Assistant showing Heart and Soul
I took both of the frame on the same night, Jan 13 2022, the details being:
Common Darks – 20 3m ISO800
Common Flats – 30 1s ISO800
IC1805 (Heart) – Panel 1 Subs – 40 3m ISO800 (2h Integration)
IC1848 (Soul) – Panel 2 Subs – 100 3m ISO800 (5h Integration)
As you can see a rather uneven number of subs. This was mostly due to the weather forecast for later evening showing possibly fog/mist so I was expecting Soul to come out with a lot of rejections. As it happens this was not the case.
Post Processing
Lots of articles on-line about gradient and neutralising backgrounds to get an even sky across both sets of images. However, a lot of this material was directing me to PixInsights. I’ve been following along some tutorials during the Christmas Holidays and to be honest it looks like something I will migrate to. However, the learning curve, the price of the license and my current maturity in this hobby mean that I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s something I’ll get round to another day. Certainly jumping into PixInsights at what I assume would be the deep end and going straight into processing a mosaic isn’t going to happen soon.
After my first attempt, as I already mentioned, had not been a great success I thought I would try a more measured approach this time. I think this has worked out for the better, certainly it’s a better image, which is of course what counts. Here’s my workflow on this mosaic:-
Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) used to Register and Stack both Panels separately
Tried taking these into Microsoft Image Composite Editor (MICE), no joy, it could not find enough information to align the images.
So, I took both images into Photoshop. In turn I performed a number of Levels Adjustments followed by a Curves Adjustment. Each manipulation I did I repeated the same on the other image trying to match the Mean value in the Histogram window. by minor changes to the Black Point and the Mid tone slider.
Once both images where complete I saved both without Layers as TIF files.
Opening MICE I selected my two new stretched images, told MICE the order and the fact that this was a Horizontal stitch and hit run. I guess because the images where now stretched MICE was able to process and provided me with the following.
Stitched Mosaic of Heart and Soul
Apart from the controlled levels and stretches the above image is unprocessed. My intention is now to perform the rest of any processing on this single image.
Starless and Enhanced Heart and Soul
Final image with the layer with stars added under the vibrance adjustment layer.
Final Image
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