Inspired by Wei-Hao Wang and Alistair Symon's magnificent Milky Way panoramas I have created this high definition mosaic of as much of the Milky Way that can be photographed from the middle latitudes of Australia. I also wanted to add the Eridanus Loop (which rarely gets any representation in widefield images) to show its position in the sky - though I had to create an awkward small outcrop to display it.
The full sized image is 32550 x 16460 pixels and is made of roughly 18 x 5 mosaic panels. It has been substantially reduced in size and quality to meet my 50MB Astrobin upload limit, though features like the Horsehead Nebula and the dark lane through the Centaurus A galaxy can still be made out. Total integration time is 89.3 hours
I have been acquiring the thousands of photos that went into producing it for 11 months and it has taken me 3 weeks to assemble and edit it due to the image size being right at the limit of Astro Pixel Processor's capabilities. 2 weeks of that was spent running my high powered computer 24 hours a day trying to get Astro Pixel Processor to successfully stitch all the mosaic panels together - I even had to double my SSD drive in my computer from 1 to 2 terabytes due to the immense storage requirements whilst doing the stitching. (each registration and integration run taking on average of about 12 hours - up to 27 hours with failed registrations !! )
I manually planned the mosaic using Stellarium and drawings on pieces of paper.
For image acquisition I used a dual camera arrangement consisting of an astro modified CentralDS Canon 6D and Sigma 85mm F/1.4 Art at F/2.8 along side a ZWO ASI294MC Pro with a Sigma 40MM F/1.4 Art at F/2.8. The two combinations were chosen due to their similar field of view. The cameras were manually rotated for each panel. The images were acquired on a laptop in two simultaneous sessions of Sequence Generator Pro. Most of the acquisition was performed under Bortle 2 skies. The Hydrogen Alpha (as well as the Oiii in the Vela SNR region) were gathered with dual side-by-side monochrome cameras.
I don't print much of my work but I am planning to treat myself to a large metallic print of this (minus the Eridanus outcrop
)
One day when I know that mosaic stitching software is more stable and capable I would like to travel to the Northern Hemisphere to acquire the missing panels between the California & Pelican Nebulae to make it a full Milky Way panorama.
Full Resolution Prodibi link :
https://kelvinhennessy.prodibi.com/a/zold489xw7qyvyjInstagram :
instagram.com/phasefourphotoFacebook :
facebook.com/phasefourphoto
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