4 panel Mosaic of IC1805 The Heart Nebula

[Comet Hunter]

Took this using the mosaic composite process in the Asiair and Pixinsight of (4) panels that make up the mosaic.
Each panel consisted of 5 hours of 300 sec's exposures.
The 4 panels were set to overlap about 40% with the heart having a full 16 hours of data applied. 10% is the minimum overlap

Equipment used was:
SV SVX102 Raptor
Asi2600 mc with the L-Extreme filter
EQ6R Pro mount
20 flats, 20 bias, 10 dark frames to calibrate per panel

The mosaic process in both the asiair and pixinsight was much simpler that I thought.
Watched a few YouTube videos and brailed my way though it 1st pass.

The only downside, mosaics using the 2600 used (a lot) of memory to capture and process.
Future mosaics I will use the asi533 which uses considerably less memory

This mosaic process opens up a whole new world of opportunity to capture targets much larger than your focal length will accommodate.

** Question is, which saturation level do you prefer? Of are they both over saturated?

OR

 

[AlanLichty]

Overall I like the saturation of the second one but find myself leaning towards some of the details in the first one.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ed,

I bet crunching this wasn't easy as those files from the 2600 are pretty good sized. Congrats on doing this!

I prefer #2. I like that the red shows up in place of that small white circle in the bottom of the heart. I really like the stronger blue in the center of the heart. If there was anything done to #2, I might suggest desaturating the orange of the heart by just a smidgen, maybe just 5%. It would be barely noticable, but it would help to Alan's point about showing more detail.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Super nice. Yes, mosaics open up a lot of flexibility in exchange for collection and processing complexity - I think well worth it though, as evidenced by this excellent result. I do also favor number 2 here (very instructive to see them side by side) as you have brought out the saturation a bit more without going over the top with it. The extra color pop in the Fishhead and in Melotte 15 make the 2nd one the winner for me.

Do you have a higher resolution/larger posting of version 2 posted somewhere? I would like to delve into the detail a bit more

ML