PIER-14 LET'S DISCUSS MOSAICS

Here is the link to the spreadsheet mentioned in the initial post.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15yG7smDp5WVdW2JVnuyKmhO7X172RVySJLb_ioroLb0/edit?usp=sharing

hello 

i m sorry to say that i cant agree to book the pier for 79% of its time for a only on project.  it is not realistic for a shared pier

May I make a suggestion so other users may look more engagingly at an ambitious project like this ?

Perhaps break it into smaller imaging chunks as its not as if P14 syndicate has not already been doing multi pane mosaics predominately any ways :)

This means users can get a 4/6 pane mosaic of a decent object while it also goes towards the larger overall mosaic over a longer period of time

Users then will get decent images from the pier rather than waiting a long time for 12/16 panes to be finished, overall i know it amounts to the same thing but it does mean people get images :)

Also what is the intended imaging time in each channel per pane ?

Also perhaps put moon down so it does not interfere with day to day jobs within the pier alrerady ?

Remember this is nothing to do with me and up to you the members to decide how what & when, I am just trying to look at it from a different angle for all of you :)

Just lost what I'd spent ages typing in and now lost the will to try and remember all I originally wrote. :(

A brief version.

Manuel has designed it such that we can use it to capture many of the objects we will likely want to by selecting from his setup small mosaics, 2 or 4 panels, that contain those objects. I'd just add that he might be sounding a bit ambitious by quoting it being fully completed within 2 years. More likely to be one of the 2 large sub-mosaics finished next year and the other early in the next. Anyone's guess right now. 

Remember this suggestion will allow us to image much of what we want anyway, but put us in a position where we can opt to complete the mosaic later. Pre-planning which is something Steve is very keen on us doing. We are not committed to doing the entire mosaic by taking Manuel's approach on this. 

What would be most useful is if Manuel could have a list of targets posted on the forum. That would most helpful, then he'd be able to offer us a list of smaller mosaic pieces which members could discuss and agree or disagree to. 

I have mentioned to Manuel that's it's likely many of the targets in this region are good candidates for narrowband, so it would also be a good idea if along with any suggestions this is mentioned. 

Cheers, 

Ray 

I would also disagree with such an ambitious plan.

Personally, I have already collected more than 200 hours in this region with a much wider FOV system (Sigma 105/Samyang 135). I am not too keen on doing a mosaic of such magnitude. Lots of things can go wrong and the end results might not be good.

Please keep in mind this is a remote Pier. If something happens (like camera defects, tilting, etc), as I have seen in the past few months, and we have to switch the camera/scope or change the camera angle, the whole Mosaic plan could be jeopardized.

Personally, I would much prefer doing a big plan with my own equipment that I have more control over.

Being a Mosaic enthusiastic myself and have done several 9, 16 panes mosaics. This plan is just too ambitious and I really cannot support it.

However,  I do support good 4/6 pane-mosaic ideas.

Thanks for the first wave of feedback. A couple of observations from my side:

1. Agree, my plan is not clear enough ... I will work on the spreadsheet to improve and refine this. As Ray writes, most of the elements of feedback are actually addressed, mainly the notion that this plan is designed to create smaller mosaics than can be assembled into a bigger one at the end. In fact it yields 2 sets of nested and growing mosaics, that can be assembled into the big one at the end.

2. Agree, many things can go wrong-ish ... yet events such as camera angle changes, camera swaps (same type), etc. can be handled as the plan is to create smaller sub-mosaics. Recalculating the overall assembly plan because of such events can be done without too many issue and should be fine. I also recently integrated data across cameras and lenses, e.g. ASI-reflector and Nikon-Tamron, and this works like a charm. I also experimented integrating images taken at 1645mm and 2350mm FL ... works too.  So, as long as we have nice sub-mosaics, we will not waste any data ... even if the final assembly does not happen based on Pier14.

3. Steve, I have a couple of questions to refine the forecast of Pier14 load, and hence help refine the timelines of the plan. In sheet 2, to estimate this, I would need to know (a) the average number of hours of imaging by quarter (equinox/solstice-based), and (b) how many of those are actually productive, on average, due to weather, moon, etc.

Will post more later today...

Kind regards

Manuel

Good morning,

Please find below the link to the updated plan in the spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16K8S5ltoSxjaOfcZ4YVXs3r3iE59dQcTvcz7JIwgR1c/edit?usp=sharing

As you can see in the first spreadsheet, the plan delivers several sub-mosaics (Level I and II) along the way:

The overall plan of course also includes a few "more boring" panes that are needed to eventually connect everything.

The spreadsheet provides a simplistic imaging plan based on LRGB only (except the Bat-Squid) to provide a very first feel of what the overall time commitment would be per Priorities and Phases, i.e. sub-mosaics.

I hope this clarifies a few elements of feedback, and please all join in the conversation.

Best wishes

Manuel

I look  your excell spreadsheet , and i m still not convinced that such a projet is acceptable on a shared pier with such a long focal

Individual pane are way too long in LRGB and for most of the pane you will get not so much great image in LRGB , will be better in SHO 

Also, this pier is imaging in LRGB at most 5h /. night , even less with moon avoidance . 

You will never see the end of a project like this and it will be frustrating for everybody. 

Hi Florent, 

I agree about the narrowband suggestion and did mention that in an earlier post. We can agree to not do this ambitious plan, however, it would be most helpful if members were to start making suggestions for individual targets, some of which might need to be captured as small mosaics anyway.

Best regards

Ray 

I look  your excell spreadsheet , and i m still not convinced that such a projet is acceptable on a shared pier with such a long focal

Individual pane are way too long in LRGB and for most of the pane you will get not so much great image in LRGB , will be better in SHO 

Also, this pier is imaging in LRGB at most 5h /. night , even less with moon avoidance . 

You will never see the end of a project like this and it will be frustrating for everybody. 

 

 

 

 

Hello,

thanks for the feedback. Two comments:

1. As mentioned previously, the LRGB is used to model the plan, but we need to discuss which filters are best for which target. So, I would much appreciate getting your views and preferences, so that we can have a collegial and collaborative discussion, which I understand is an intent of the RoboScope team. 

2. I actually think this is very realistic, as the "target-sub-mosaics" and "inter-target-glue" can be captured over two or more years, leaving the Pier mostly open for other targets. At any rate, these targets will be requested year after year for as long as life goes on. So, the idea here is to join them up into an über-mosaic rather than keeping them separate. So I am not seeing building this mosaic as an impossibility for this Pier.

All the best 

Manuel 

I would also disagree with such an ambitious plan.

Personally, I have already collected more than 200 hours in this region with a much wider FOV system (Sigma 105/Samyang 135). I am not too keen on doing a mosaic of such magnitude. Lots of things can go wrong and the end results might not be good.

Hello,

interesting indeed ... I can see that as you have done this region extensively, you would not be interested in more ... Can you nevertheless share with everyone what you fancy imaging in 2022? That would obviously help a lot.

All the best

Manuel

I would also disagree with such an ambitious plan.

Personally, I have already collected more than 200 hours in this region with a much wider FOV system (Sigma 105/Samyang 135). I am not too keen on doing a mosaic of such magnitude. Lots of things can go wrong and the end results might not be good.

Hello,

interesting indeed ... I can see that as you have done this region extensively, you would not be interested in more ... Can you nevertheless share with everyone what you fancy imaging in 2022? That would obviously help a lot.

All the best

Manuel

At this point I am mostly interested in Dark/molecular clouds.

I love Mosaics, but for this kind of FoV, I would just use P4 to combine with my own NB setup (2600MM+3nm Astrodon). It takes much less panes, maybe 9-16 at most, and I can get the results in 2-3 months.

Attached are some of the results I got from P4. 2 Panes and 6 Panes correspondingly.

Good morning, 

While waiting for further feedback on the proposed mega-mosaic, perhaps some suggestions for mosaics of other regions of the sky. Less "controversial" ones. 

Really hoping for some proposals soon in order that some kind of plan can be put in place ahead of the pier being back up and running. Mosaics of regions that become 'visible' during late Spring and early Summer are particularly welcome. 

There is a separate post to add suggestions for anything that fits within the fov and therefore not a mosaic. 

Cheers, 

Ray 

I would also disagree with such an ambitious plan.

Personally, I have already collected more than 200 hours in this region with a much wider FOV system (Sigma 105/Samyang 135). I am not too keen on doing a mosaic of such magnitude. Lots of things can go wrong and the end results might not be good.

Hello,

interesting indeed ... I can see that as you have done this region extensively, you would not be interested in more ... Can you nevertheless share with everyone what you fancy imaging in 2022? That would obviously help a lot.

All the best

Manuel

 

 

At this point I am mostly interested in Dark/molecular clouds.

I love Mosaics, but for this kind of FoV, I would just use P4 to combine with my own NB setup (2600MM+3nm Astrodon). It takes much less panes, maybe 9-16 at most, and I can get the results in 2-3 months.

Attached are some of the results I got from P4. 2 Panes and 6 Panes correspondingly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very nice indeed! And dark/molecular clouds are also of interest of course...

Cheers

Manuel 

It is certainly a heroic exercise, but not one I am attracted to.

My key question is why devote so much shared pier time to one project? If I have my calculations correct, with a 15% overlap the final image is about 24,000 pixels wide. At typical high-quality photo printing resolutions of 300 dpi, that is about 2 metres across.

Yes, it would make a great zoomable image on a computer, but to what purpose? To admire it you would want to look at the whole thing, so zoomed out. Zoom in on details and you might as well have single images or small mosaics.

If we want to get the whole sweep of that area, it would be better to use a short focal length lens (Pier 4) or even find someone with a Canon f2 50mm. We can then blend in higher resolution sub-image, e.g. Robert Gendler's technique described in his chapter Hybrid Images: A Strategy for Optimising the Impact of Astronomical Images in the book Lessons from the Masters: Current Concepts in Astronomical Image Processing.

I am also doubtful that you could complete the project in the time allocated. I can't see any allowance for Moon interference (I may have missed it), very important in LRGB imaging. To me, that makes the 50% successful imaging hours assumption doubtful. Allowing for periods of bad weather, defective frames, instrument maintenance and faults, and moon up, I think we would be attempting something very difficult. There are so many ways it could go wrong.

I am personally uncomfortable with committing that much time to providing a high resolution backdrop to a smaller number of interesting targets.

When I started on this pier I was all for massive mosaics. My experiences have made me much more cautious. The struggle to get a 4-panel mosaic to work and produce a pleasing result has pushed me towards 1- and 2-panel imaging.

As you have pointed out, we can use elements of the total mosaic to image specific targets. However, when I look at the map you have provided, it appears that many of the nebula targets require more panels to capture the entire object in a reasonable framing than you would if you were focused on the nebula. For example, the Elephant's Trunk complex would need 4-6 panels.

Obviously, I will take the majority vote, but it is a no from me.

old_eyes

It is certainly a heroic exercise, but not one I am attracted to.

My key question is why devote so much shared pier time to one project? If I have my calculations correct, with a 15% overlap the final image is about 24,000 pixels wide. At typical high-quality photo printing resolutions of 300 dpi, that is about 2 metres across.

Yes, it would make a great zoomable image on a computer, but to what purpose? To admire it you would want to look at the whole thing, so zoomed out. Zoom in on details and you might as well have single images or small mosaics.

If we want to get the whole sweep of that area, it would be better to use a short focal length lens (Pier 4) or even find someone with a Canon f2 50mm. We can then blend in higher resolution sub-image, e.g. Robert Gendler's technique described in his chapter Hybrid Images: A Strategy for Optimising the Impact of Astronomical Images in the book Lessons from the Masters: Current Concepts in Astronomical Image Processing.

I am also doubtful that you could complete the project in the time allocated. I can't see any allowance for Moon interference (I may have missed it), very important in LRGB imaging. To me, that makes the 50% successful imaging hours assumption doubtful. Allowing for periods of bad weather, defective frames, instrument maintenance and faults, and moon up, I think we would be attempting something very difficult. There are so many ways it could go wrong.

I am personally uncomfortable with committing that much time to providing a high resolution backdrop to a smaller number of interesting targets.

When I started on this pier I was all for massive mosaics. My experiences have made me much more cautious. The struggle to get a 4-panel mosaic to work and produce a pleasing result has pushed me towards 1- and 2-panel imaging.

As you have pointed out, we can use elements of the total mosaic to image specific targets. However, when I look at the map you have provided, it appears that many of the nebula targets require more panels to capture the entire object in a reasonable framing than you would if you were focused on the nebula. For example, the Elephant's Trunk complex would need 4-6 panels.

Obviously, I will take the majority vote, but it is a no from me.

old_eyes

 

 

Good morning,

thank you for sharing your experience, thoughts and perspective. Integrating images of different resolutions is indeed something I'll try. 

Looking at the targets in this area, only two would require a 1x2 mosaic, which (if i understand you well) is feasible in your experience.

CS
Manuel 

Steve has just notified us that all uncompleted jobs have been resubmitted in preparation for when the pier is back up and running 

I recently submitted such a target and would be grateful for any feedback before reconfirming the job. The target is diffuse nebula sh2-115 and was originally entered as 2 jobs, O3 and Ha. This is just starting to rise and therefore will initially keep the pier busy at the end of the imaging window. There is the option to alter this into a mosaic, so please indicate if you would prefer to stay with a single panel, or, one of the mosaic options.

Cheers,

Ray 

Steve has just notified us that all uncompleted jobs have been resubmitted in preparation for when the pier is back up and running 

I recently submitted such a target and would be grateful for any feedback before reconfirming the job. The target is diffuse nebula sh2-115 and was originally entered as 2 jobs, O3 and Ha. This is just starting to rise and therefore will initially keep the pier busy at the end of the imaging window. There is the option to alter this into a mosaic, so please indicate if you would prefer to stay with a single panel, or, one of the mosaic options.

Cheers,

Ray 

Hi Ray,

I like the idea of the 2x2 mosaic, starting with the East side.

Cheers

Manuel

To follow up on this conversation, I would like to suggest the following two mosaics for the Cepheus region. I hope this works for everyone.

Cheers

Manuel

A: To cover the mu Cep region:

B: To cover the broader Messier 52 region: