It's finally done! A 24-panel version of my mosaic in Cygnus centered around the rarely imaged Supernova Remnant W63 (G 82.2+5.3). In the end, I had to build a new PC to process all the data (over 100 GB). This extends
my 2018 8-panel version by one panel in every direction making the overall mosaic four time larger. Most of the work on the 16 new panels was captured in 2020. It was towards the end of 2020 that I realized I couldn't continue editing the mosaic on my laptop. I made a couple additions in 2021 while I saved for a new computer: added to the W63 SNR panel with an [OIII] filter; re-shot RGB on a panel that had bad focus. The 2021 additions were made with a new camera and filters, but the image scale remains unchanged as I used the same telescope, and the new camera has the same pixel pitch (3.76 microns) as the old one, just with a bigger and lower-noise sensor.
Processing took several months with lots of trial and error and tests. In the end, I used PixInsight for all pre-processing, registration and stacking of the individual panels. Astro Pixel Processor was used for mosaic construction in each channel. The linear mosaic images for each channel were then brought back in to PixInsight for a small amount of deconvolution, noise reduction (MMT), and to make starless versions of the narrowband channels with StarNet++. Final combination of all channels and color work was done in Adobe Photoshop as I like working with layers and blend modes.
The version here on Astrobin is reduced, but still a very large file (100MB). To experience the image in even higher-res, I have created
a zoomable, tiled version on my website. Scroll or click on the image to zoom in; click-and-drag to move around.
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