Solar Mosaics (some blending issues)

[Kenny]

My first attempt at mosaics. Solar mosaic below.

Videos captured with Coronado Solarmax 60 solar scope on the HEQ5 mount with Celestron Neximage Solar System Imaging CCD camera using SharpCap2 (colour disabled). Stacked and autosharpened in Autostakkert2. Photomerged, autoblended and recoloured in Adobe Photoshop CS2.

This version of Photoshop has automatically aligned and merged the images fairly well but struggled to make autoblend work across the images so has left behind patches of varying brightness. Need to figure out how to correct that - any bright ideas? (no pun intended)

12 pane mosaic of the Sun (with x2 Barlow). 12 x 30 second AVIs.

[MarkS]

I can see a lot of work has gone into that!  Well done.

It's an excellent attempt but I don't really know how to attempt equalisation and blending.

Mark

[Carole]

Wow Kenny massive leap forwards.

I must admit I don't normally use automated mosaicing, I tend to do it manually and adjust the layers as I go along.  But that is very tedious. 

I have managed to adjust some of the worst discrepancies by selecting and adjusting each area individually in order to improve this particular image, it still has some patches that need attending to, but in the normal course of events it's not really the answer.



Carole

[Kenny]

Wow. Thanks very much Carole for putting time into that. I had the option of autoblending the photomerged image, where it stiches together the best of each image at almost random angles, or saving as aligned layers and manually blending. I spent ages yesterday working on the latter but there is a gradient across each image/layer so it seemed impossible to blend each layer manually. Will discuss offline with you how you did this.

[The Thing]

I like Imerge for this sort of thing. Canon do a photostitch tool, as do Microsoft. MS ICE looks a bit snazzy, must try it!

[Kenny]

I like Imerge for this sort of thing. Canon do a photostitch tool, as do Microsoft. MS ICE looks a bit snazzy, must try it!

Microsoft ICE wasn't able to cope with this at all. It couldn't even stitch the photos together.

[Kenny]

p.s. ICE may work better on the Moon where the features are bigger. I plan to try a Moon mosaic.

[The Thing]

I've used Imerge on the Moon several times, it does a good job. I would like to think that the solar 'surface' would be a similar task.

[Kenny]

I've used Imerge on the Moon several times, it does a good job. I would like to think that the solar 'surface' would be a similar task.

Duncan - I definitely owe you a flaggon of beer! Image restitched/blended in i-Merge then recoloured in Photoshop CS2. Here are the results.

[MarkS]

Excellent!
That is so much better.

You should be well proud of that image.

[Kenny]

Excellent!
That is so much better.

You should be well proud of that image.

I'm still in shock. I'll be proud once that wears off. 

[Carole]

Excellent

Carole

[The Thing]

Good job! Really nice result.