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Heart & Soul Nebulas: 15-panel mosaic

I created this mosaic with a ZenithStar 61ii throughout August, September, and October 2021. Each panel integrated a minimum of 7 hours of 6 minute exposures at dual narrowband. The mosaic shown here integrates 107.5 hours of photons.

 

Take a look for the Heart Nebula, Soul Nebula, Fish Head Nebula, quite a few planetary nebulas, and quite a few more hydrogen-rich formations.

 

For each panel, I extracted and stacked Ha and [OIII] separately, then processed to remove light pollution.

 

I then stitched separate mosaics for Ha and [OIII] and combined them with an HOO2 palette.

 

I found that taking adding 3-6 panels at a time and carefully matching across boundaries was helpful in building a consistent mosaic. I also found that the LNC typically suggested for mosaics (LNC degree 4, 3 iterations) introduced wavy artifacts across the mosaic, but blending with simple MBB (20% overlap) gave a much better result since I had already reduced light pollution from the individual panels.

 

See more views and acquisition details at astrobin: www.astrobin.com/ar32lb

 

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Uploaded on November 4, 2021