Creating a mosaic image in PixInsight (the easy way)

[@adrianaamez2078]

Brilliant! I will wait for the next video! Thank you so much!

[@jonathanpearceff]

Great explanation of how to do the merge. The automation makes it much easier that I imagined it would be.

[@astrojourneyuk]

I think it helps to have good and well planned panels too. Stars on the edges of the panels can definitely be a pain. Before doing this video I had issues with Ty same data because I’d cropped the panels too much right at the start.

[@christopherlloyd926]

Thank you, thank you (I wish I knew your name)! I shot my first ever mosaic, and it was a "jump in the deep end" experience with a 2x2 matrix of 11deg wide frames. As you would expect, merging images this wide would result in a chevron-shaped final image, and I was finding that the registration method espoused by others was just not working for me. Then I discovered your video here and you method worked a dream. Now I have a lovely starscape stretching from Crux and the Jewelbox westward to the Great Carina Nebula, taking in the Running Chicken Nebula and numerous star clusters. All these against a canvas of thousands of toned-down stars and the gas & dust clouds of our galaxy's Carina-Sagittarius arm. It was worth all the angst, and loss of hair. A great video, and an even greater method excellently explained - I wish I could hit the thumbs-up icon a lot more times. I'm now a subscriber of yours.

[@astrojourneyuk]

I see in another comment you’ve worked out my name. Amusingly I don’t think I ever mention it. 🙈 Anyway I’m glad that you’ve worked things out and thank you for the kind comments, it’s very encouraging.

[@nieljensen4325]

Great video and very helpful in producing a process for doing Mosaic images with Pixinsight. One question that I have is just how do I access that Pixinsight Mosaic By Coordinates document you show in the video? Thanks for the video and information on the documentation. Niel

[@rmf11699]

Thanks for making the video!

[@astrojourneyuk]

No problem. Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to feedback.

[@JohdagM]

Thank you! I’m trying to follow along, but I cannot make Mosaic By Coordinates work.. “there were errors reading the coordinates of the images”. So I’m not sure if this has to do with the original files (captured using ASIAIR) or the WCS files. Thank you in advance!

[@JohdagM]

Never mind. I figured Fits files are deprecated and the coordinates cannot be embedded into the WCS Fits files.. so I saved a copy of them as XISF and now is working fine.

[@TheTabugman]

Thanks! For eliminating the ampglow, I suggest stacking in DSS och ASI Studio. Siril also has issues getting rid of the ampglow from my 183MC and it seems Pixinsight has too. I'm assuming you're using darks etc?

[@astrojourneyuk]

Since doing any videos on the ASI183MC Pro and talking about the amp glow issues I saw a post online about needing to do dark flats to remove the amp glow. Ironically I haven't used the camera since and so I've not had a chance to even try. Dark flats aren't something I've done before but I'm confident it's the answer rather than just the normal bias, darks and flats I typically use.

[@MrGuitar50]

Great job! I'm just starting to do mosaics. Question: do you have to do ABE/DBE and SPCC before you do the process or do you really have to wait? Seems like you could create the mosaic and THEN do the post processing. Thx in advance!

[@astrojourneyuk]

Mmmmm, that's a good question. Initially I was going to say before, but then after thinking about it, it would probably be better and a smoother result doing it afterwards because PI might make the edges darker etc. which would then show up more when you join the images. To be honest, the effort of doing mosaics still scares me, there is a lot of time and effort goes into capturing the frames and getting it all to match in the end is hard. It's easier with colour cameras, mono is even harder to get the gradients right.

[@timcorso6337]

Nice video, clear and concise. While you can't see the edges of the frames in the mosaic, you can see there are four panels making up the final image. I think this is because the is too much of a gradient variation across each frame. I'm looking forward to seeing how you will handle this in the next video 😃

[@astrojourneyuk]

Thanks for the feedback Tim, much appreciated. Before doing these videos I processed the whole thing end to end, next time I’ll record what I did to get the results because now I’m going through it again I’m having issues, but then who doesn’t have issues processing?!?! 😂

[@craiglowery4427]

Amazing video. How did you capture the four images at the telescope? How did you know how much to move the mount each time?

[@astrojourneyuk]

Hi Craig, thanks for watching. There is a video before this in the series where I talk through how I plan and capture the mosaic on the ASIAIR device here kzbin.info/www/bejne/hqjdXqylnrmLd6s

[@davidstearn1342]

Why did you not use SPCC ?

[@astrojourneyuk]

A good question! In all honesty I'd forgotten about its release in November 2022! :( I'll definitely be using it in future. Previously I used to do manual colour calibration so the photometric approach is a benefit over that one. Thank you for raising the point for others to see.

[@anata5127]

Is it ampglow there on the right side? Green background is result of incorrect stretching. Stretching has to be UNlinked before color calibration. Final image looks like mosaic. Nebulosity on bottom left image cut like by knife, background of top two panels sharply change in region where they are stitched. Gradient of background is unique for every image and not uniform. Perhaps, certain recommendations are not optimal. Or maybe acquisition of images not optimal.