Mosaic individual Panel Processing before Integration?

@whixson Wayne, that very much depends on the panels. If they were taken from a very dark site then usually it is fine to process them all in one go. If there is a lot of light pollution that introduces strong gradients then light pollution removal may be needed before creating the mosaic. Just give it a try and see what you get.

I do have a lot of light pollution so will proceed with doing LP reduction on the individual panels. Another question - I'm doing 10% overlap with dithering. There are stacking artifacts around th e edges if I do the full integration. Should I do registration the the reference frame to keep the edges cleaner for when I integrate the final panels?

Wayne

Normally MBB and LNC in the integrate tab will solve those edges in a mosaic.

Thanks! Any recommendations for the degree of LNC and number of iterations? Also when doing the individual panes, should I use LNC there too?

Obe more thing - if I do the Ha and O3 extract, should I do the RGB combine on the individual panes and then do the mosaic integration? Or create individual Ha and O3 mosaics then align and combine?

Wayne

You can first start with the default settings, LNC 3 iterations, MBB more towards the % of overlap you have. LNC is not required on the individual panes, but it wouldn't hurt either.

Regarding the RGB combining, both workflows are possible, I would do the full mosaic.

Thanks! I’ve just finished a total of about 400 3-minute subs over 6 nights with my QHY 268c. That’s about 5 hours for each of the 4 panels. My goal was 10 hours per panel, but going to pause and give it a try with what I’ve got. 

I’ve reviewed Mabula’s tutorials but they’re up bit out of date with respect to current software settings. He recommends setting Integration weights to Equal. To do that I need to turn off automatic and then select some Integration algorithm- average, median, etc. What is the recommended setting here?

Thsnks, Wayne

@whixson Wayne, first try with the automatic settings. If they don't work then you can disable automatic and play with the settings. If necessary we can advice you about that but in general the automatic settings should be good.

Ok first panel looks highly distorted. 

@whixson Is that a single panel or a mosaic? If a mosaic, please follow these steps

https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/postid/3450/

and note that all registration related settings are on tab 5. In tab 6 leave everything to default for now. Later we probably need to play with MBB and LNC.

• @wvreeven it’s a single panel. A number of frames wouldn’t register so I turned up the scale and added stars. I don’t know, maybe it’s related to the number of stars in the frame? I’d guess over 5000 in an APS-C sensor. F/4.5 optics, 1.3 arc” per pixel

Turn off dynamic distortion correction, I think you may have that on while the data probably doesn't need it.

That was the trick. I turned it on when I was getting a lot of frames that couldn't be registered, but now with increased scale and 2000 stars it worked