One of the things I am a huge fan of is widefield astrophotography. I love seeing all of the interaction and really just the sheer size of some of these objects. Getting those widefield shots sometimes calls for mosaics.
Mosaics are a combination of smaller images put together to create a larger one.
Since getting the observatory mosaics are something we really wanted to try our hand at and since getting the observatory we have gathered data for simple 2 panel mosaics all the way up to a 9 panel mosaic of the constellation Orion.
Processing and assembling the mosaics is something I have never had much success doing and with the lack of time lately something I really can't sit to learn and do.
So with that said we reached out to my good friend Albert Barr to help Jim and I with the pre-processing of all that data.
We may have bitten off more than we could chew with the 9 panel but the 2 panels are much more manageable.
Here I present to you the first image of that collaboration, The Witch Head Nebula:
IC 2118 - The Witch Head Nebula and Rigel
The Witch Head Nebula is illuminated by the near by star Rigel who dominates the right side of the image. Our camera/scope can only fit The Witch Head in one frame so more than one image was necessary in order to illustrate the Witch Head basking in the light of Rigel.
I wanted to thank Albert for his help it is really appreciated.
Thanks for looking.