This image of the Eagle Nebula (M16, Sh2-49, NGC6611) was no easy task for me. This was my first attempt on a mosaic and I think I chose the worst nights to do it. The moon was getting brighter over the multiple nights that I was imaging, and the weather was getting sketchier. My original plan was to image panel one on the first of four nights and panel two on the second, then repeat the process on nights three and four to get more images. But I didn't take into account that the world may have other plans. 

Night one was fine up until around 1:00 in the morning when dew completely covered my lens and made almost all of my SII and OIII frames useless. I ended night one with only H-alpha. On night two, everything was going fine  until about 20 - 30 minutes after the meridian flip. My mount decided to lose track of the target and slew away from it. I ended night two with all the H-alpha I needed, but only got four frames of OIII and no frames of SII. On nights three and four, I decided to skip any H-alpha frames and focus on the OIII and SII frames that I couldn't get on nights one and two.  Night three was fine up until I started imaging for my SII frames, then clouds decided to roll in to ruin the fun. On night four I had to crunch in as much OIII and SII for panel one and two as I could. Thankfully, the night was completely clear and I was able to get some usable OIII and SII frames. 

I found out how bad the OIII and SII frames really were after stacking. OIII was usable but SII seemed completely unusable from my point of view. It had a very noticeable dark line running down the middle and a large, dense halo with a dark core on the right panel of the mosaic, which I suppose came from dew on the front lens again. Even though I was disappointed with the final stacked frames, I chose to continue and process the image anyway. With the help of PixInsight and Photoshop, I was able to recover the image pretty well from what I can see. Safe to say I won't attempt a mosaic until a new moon and I know for sure the nights are dry and clear! 

Either way, I'm very happy with the final image!