I was inspired initially by mosaics done by others on Astrobin (especially this 32(!) panel mosaic by
Rogelio Bernal Andreo), so I took a shot at doing a mosaic on one of the great targets in the night sky - Orion. Many use PixInsight due to its suite of tools that help with processing... but I don't have PixInsight, so I did things the hard way! As many of you know, Mosaics are especially challenging due to the need for consistent color (as you process each panel independently, since you usually process the starless image separate from the starfield and then recombine later) and any coma that may need corrected at the edge of each frame. It probably took me upwards of 8-9 solid hours of post processing time trying to get reasonable matches in the realm of stretching the data, background extraction, color balance, etc. I think I’ll be taking breaks from large mosaics for now, or maybe I’ll just need to invest in a camera with a larger sensor so I don’t need to do as many panels!
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