Heart and Soul Nebulas at 2"/px resolution : 15-panel mosaic (Paul Macklin)

Heart and Soul Nebulas at 2"/px resolution : 15-panel mosaic

I've been working on this mosaic with a ZenithStar 61ii throughout August, September, and October. Each panel integrates 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.

C: Uncropped Ha mosaic

D: Uncropped [OIII] mosaic

E: Uncropped HOO2 mosaic

F: Heart Nebula crop

G: Tighter crop on Heart Nebula

H: Heart of the Heart

I: Soul Nebula

J: LBN 674 and SH2-200 (planetary nebulas)

K: Full resolution PNG (Warning! 180 MB)

L: JPEG compressed mosaic (max dimension reduced to 10,000 px)

D

Description: Uncropped [OIII] mosaic (90% scale due to JPEG limits, 50% quality)

Uploaded: ...

E

Description: Uncropped HOO2 mosaic with no further processing (90% scale due to JPEG limits, 50% quality)

Uploaded: ...

F

Description: Zoom / crop on the Heart Nebula

Uploaded: ...

G

Description: Tighter zoom on the Heart Nebula

Uploaded: ...

H

Description: Heart of the Heart

Uploaded: ...

I

Description: Zoom and crop on the Soul Nebula

Uploaded: ...

J

Description: LBN 674, SH2-200 (not photographed very often!)
These are star forming regions and planetary nebulas.

Uploaded: ...

K

Description: Full resolution high quality PNG (warning: 180 MB)

Uploaded: ...

L

Description: Cropped and processed, JPEG compressed to a max dimension of 10,000 pixels for easy viewing.

Uploaded: ...

M

Description: A reprocess with slightly better color work, and a lighter (minimal) touch with Topaz to better preserve the original details.

Uploaded: ...

Deep Sky Mosaics

Nebulas - Widefield and Mosaics

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5177643
PixInsight job	3XG4L3KALXMT2JJEU70YCAXNGP18IRZQ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	02h48m23s.30
RA (top/left)	03h12m10s.12
RA (top/right)	03h14m07s.45
RA (bottom/right)	02h21m09s.94
RA (bottom/left)	02h26m02s.60

Dec (center)	+61°03′00″.2
Dec (top/left)	+58°47′51″.5
Dec (top/right)	+63°14′54″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	+63°01′04″.3
Dec (bottom/left)	+58°34′09″.3

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