8 replies to this topic

[Joseph_Z]

Hi there, 

I have a newbie question about mosaic and PixInsight. I have been using ASIAir and Siril for post processing. I am considering PixInsight mainly because I wanted to try mosaic and Siril can’t do it. I understand I can use ICE or Hugin, but ideally one program can do it all. 
 

I watched a couple of YouTube instruction videos on mosaic in PixInsight. It looks fairly straightforward. But in all of them I noticed that in plate solve the user is required to put in the date the photo was taken. My question is if I have lots of subs from multiple dates, is PixInsight able to accommodate that? 
 

If there is a way with modest amount of work then I am happy to learn it. But I would like to know that before paying for PixInsight. 
 

I appreciate any insights you could provide! 
cheers. 

[John Berger]

you make a mosaic out of stacks, not mosaicking with individual subs

 

just ImageSolve the stacks, and everything else is pretty easy

 

I followed this straightforward tutorial and it worked out good enough for me https://www.galactic...xinsight-mosaic

 

also make sure the SNR between all the stacks are as similar as possible (meaning, similar integration time), because it will not look so good if they have visibly different SNRs

Edited by John Berger, 14 October 2024 - 11:18 PM.

[gsaramet]

Hi!

 

As answered below, you plate solve the stacks. The approximative date is good enough for the plate solver. 

 

An extra trick (if your mosaic is large): you might get bad gradients and banding (I had that with a 10 panel mosaic). There's a script called Photometric Mosaic, which does better than the standard GradientMergeMosaic. You need to download it though.  It might help extra if you remove the gradients and run a SPCC on each stacked panel before merging. GMM was good enough on a 2 panels mosaic, though. 

[soojooko]

If mosaics is your main reason for getting PI, you should consider Astro Pixel Processor. APP makes great stacks and deals with mosaics very well.

[Joseph_Z]

If mosaics is your main reason for getting PI, you should consider Astro Pixel Processor. APP makes great stacks and deals with mosaics very well.

Thank you soojooko. Astro Pixel Processor looks pretty powerful. I might give it a try. 

[soojooko]

Thank you soojooko. Astro Pixel Processor looks pretty powerful. I might give it a try. 

It's pretty well established as one the the best tools for mosaics, so indeed give it a go. Its also less complex than PI, while still having excellent processing tools.

 

Do you have your mosaic panels ready to go - or are you just exploring options before you try?

[Joseph_Z]

you make a mosaic out of stacks, not mosaicking with individual subs

 

just ImageSolve the stacks, and everything else is pretty easy

 

I followed this straightforward tutorial and it worked out good enough for me https://www.galactic...xinsight-mosaic

 

also make sure the SNR between all the stacks are as similar as possible (meaning, similar integration time), because it will not look so good if they have visibly different SNRs

Thank you John. That makes sense. I will need to stack all the subs for each panel separately and stitch together the stacks, not the subs themselves. 

 

Hi!

 

As answered below, you plate solve the stacks. The approximative date is good enough for the plate solver. 

 

An extra trick (if your mosaic is large): you might get bad gradients and banding (I had that with a 10 panel mosaic). There's a script called Photometric Mosaic, which does better than the standard GradientMergeMosaic. You need to download it though.  It might help extra if you remove the gradients and run a SPCC on each stacked panel before merging. GMM was good enough on a 2 panels mosaic, though. 

Thanks gsaramet, I have been doing all the subs under the same condition. I would have the same amount of subs for each panel every night. Then repeat the same exercise another night. I will end up with several batches of panels, each batch has the same numbers of subs for each panel from each night. 

[Joseph_Z]

It's pretty well established as one the the best tools for mosaics, so indeed give it a go. Its also less complex than PI, while still having excellent processing tools.

 

Do you have your mosaic panels ready to go - or are you just exploring options before you try?

I have been doing a 6 panel mosaic of Heart and Soul nebula. I have collected about 10 subs (10min each) for each of the 6 panels over 3 days and I was planning on doing at least another 10 subs for each panel. I did those with a narrow band filter. These were all shot under the same condition. Every night I shoot same amount of subs for each panel and go through all 6 panels. At the time I didn't know what to do with them but thought I would collect data first then figure out how to process them into one image. 

 

I would imagine in Siril, I will stack each panel  together and combine the Ha and OIII stacks in Siril PixelMath to produce one image for each panel. Then I will go to Astro Pixel Processor to merge the 6 panels together. Then I will go back to Siril and continue with background extraction, star removal, stretch, etc. and continue with my usual workflow in Siril? 

 

Does that sound right? Or can APP take over the workflow after mosiac?

Thank you again. 

[soojooko]

I have been doing a 6 panel mosaic of Heart and Soul nebula. I have collected about 10 subs (10min each) for each of the 6 panels over 3 days and I was planning on doing at least another 10 subs for each panel. I did those with a narrow band filter. These were all shot under the same condition. Every night I shoot same amount of subs for each panel and go through all 6 panels. At the time I didn't know what to do with them but thought I would collect data first then figure out how to process them into one image. 

 

I would imagine in Siril, I will stack each panel  together and combine the Ha and OIII stacks in Siril PixelMath to produce one image for each panel. Then I will go to Astro Pixel Processor to merge the 6 panels together. Then I will go back to Siril and continue with background extraction, star removal, stretch, etc. and continue with my usual workflow in Siril? 

 

Does that sound right? Or can APP take over the workflow after mosiac?

Thank you again. 

You can use APP end-to-end. It has everything you need for stacking, stitching mosaics and processing. Only area im not sure about is if you can do star removal and recombining in APP. Hopefully a more experienced user can chime in.

Edited by soojooko, 15 October 2024 - 01:25 PM.