Crescent Nebula, 2 panel mosaic preview

The skies have been more cooperative lately, allowing me to continue working on my 24-panel mosaic of Cygnus. Initially, I hoped to finish the project by October last year, but that turned out to be overly optimistic 🙂

Last year, I focused on collecting data evenly across the panels, which had its benefits — I was able to create a “preview” of the mosaic.

This year, I am concentrating on gathering sufficient data for each panel, without as much target hopping. I'd like to share some intermediate results for two of the panels, with 6 hours 30 minutes and 5 hours of exposure each.

During the integration process in PixInsight, I decided to use stricter criteria for minimal weight, resulting in the rejection of around 20% of the frames. I will continue collecting data for these two panels until I can achieve a clear view of the Bubble Nebula, Crescent Nebula, and some OIII emission from the Wolf-Rayet nebula.

Not much processing has been applied to these two panels, just enough to highlight some of the features. No complicated stretching was done, just a simple histogram transformation.