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Galactic Centre Mosaic (Year 1...)

This was shot over 3 or 4 nights during June-July. I only decided to make a mosaic after shooting the Lagoon and Trifid nebs and thinking it would be pretty awesome to show the whole area off as there is so much going on! Unfortunately, with the spur of the moment decision to take this on, i was left with no time to complete it before the Milky Way sank out of reach. I intended to make this a 15 panel mosaic but only managed 4! But i will be better prepared next year :)

 

This was a hard one to process. Its my first long exposure astro mosaic so i struggled with trying to make everything blend together seamlessly. Each panel being shot on a different night at different temperatures didn't help either. Especially one panel which i only managed 45 minutes on due to cloud ruining a lot of the frames. I had to stretch it first and then bring the rest of them up to the same point. If i had managed the same amount of exposure time on each one, i could of probably stretched a bit further!

 

Exposure Details:

3 panels contains 1 hour 20 minutes worth of 120 second exposures, the other 44 minutes worth, f3.2, ISO 800, calibration frames, 200mm

 

Stitched with Microsoft ICE, Processed in CS5

 

Taken with a Canon 1100D and a EF200L lens on an Astrotrac TT320X-AG

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Uploaded on July 23, 2013
Taken on July 23, 2013