I mentioned when I posted the Chile trip images, I had an issue while capturing the Vela SNR 4-tile mosaic (the camera angle was 90° off-plan) that precluded those 4 tiles from mosaicking together (there was no overlap between tiles#1-2 and #3-4). Once I got the rest of the trip’s processing and posting done, I planned to revisit the data to see what could be done with it. I ended up mosaicking those 4 tiles with the tiles created from the data the other three nights’ data from the Vela SNR region. It’s a Frankenmosaic for sure, but as I’ve done before (and since you’ve signed up for the ride on this journey!), I’m sharing the good, bad, and UGLY with you!
The night I spent collecting data on the 4-tile mosaic of the Vela SNR region (20Mar2026) was a bust…at least from the producing a nice 4-tile mosaic image perspective. The problem I ran into was a known issue with the SGPro Framing & Mosaic Wizard (F&MW) (at least known to me…I’d run into the same issue and reported it to the SGP developers in December 2023). The issue is, when you plan an image in the F&MW to be captured at a camera angle other than zero or ninety degrees, the interface between SGPro and the plate solver insists you need to rotate your camera angle by 90° away from the camera angle you intend with the framing plan. That’s exactly what happened here…I planned the 4-tile mosaic to be framed at a camera angle of 50° to best capture the area of the SNR I hadn’t yet imaged. When I executed that plan on that fateful night, SGPro’s plate solver told me I had a 84.5° delta from 50° (even though I was almost perfectly aligned to the 50° mark on the camera body) and directed me to rotate the camera by 84.5°. I obediently rotated the camera to the point where the camera body scale (high-tech masking tape with angle measurement marks on it) read ~135°. At that point, the plate solver told me I had a delta of 1.69° – good enough to start the sequence.
With SGPro’s direction and my obedient following…I spent the night collecting data on the four tiles of the Vela SNR mosaic that form the vertical “H” in the Frankenmosaic! When I tried to mosaic those 4 tiles together, there was no overlap between tiles #1-2, forming the left-most side of the “H”, and tiles #3-4, forming the right-most side of the “H”.
I hated the idea that I’d spent a night collecting data that I couldn’t use. So…I decided to see if I could use the other data I’d captured of the region to “bridge the gap” and form a single mosaicked image. I first threw all my 2024 and 2026 data at the Astro Pixel Processor algorithm…it choked. So…my next attempt was to mosaic only the 2026 data – the 4 tile mosaic, the Crest and Bridge captured on 16 March 2026, https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/vela-supernova-remnant-snr-crest-bridge/ , the Highway and Spur captured on 19 March 2026, https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/vela-supernova-remnant-snr-highway-spur/ (which have substantial overlap amongst them, but do provide the upper horizontal arm of the “H” bridging it together), and the Gum 20 and Vela SNR Spiral Flame captured on 22 March 2026 (the bottom bridge between the errant “H” arms) https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/vela-supernova-remnant-snr-spiral-flame/
It WORKED! It’s a Frankenmosaic that I’ve decided not to post in the gallery…but a story to share, nonetheless. During processing, I did some clean-up of the seams between the tiles, but left them mostly visible so you could see where the different tiles fit into the Frankenstein puzzle.
…and the good news is, after reaching out to the SGPro developers through their SGP Forum (with other SGPro users piling on that they’d had similiar issues), they finally acknowledged there was an issue, and claim to have fixed it in the latest v4.5 release!
…and good news #2 is, I have a “map” for next year’s imaging of the region!