Mosaic's on different nights in Astrobin - Forums

Topic starter

Oct 20, 2020

I shot a few mosaic's and when I am reporting the different nights its counting those integrations to the total integration time. For example, each mosaic frame is 4 hrs. It's 16hrs of at telescope work but only 4hrs of total integration in terms of SnR. Am I missing something or should I be reporting it differently?

Jeff

Salvatore Iovene

AstroBin Staff

IOTD Staff

Exemplary contributor

Oct 20, 2020

AstroBin calculates the integration as the sum of each frame, regardless of how you composite them in the end (stack them vs put them in a mosaic).

Matt Harbison

Oct 20, 2020

I too wrestle with this. Might I suggest a column for “PROJECT” that allows for a simple number of frames- and integration times? On my recent project which took five years it just became impossible to list each night of capture on Astrobin. (which I have recorded in my journals- haha) I do want the credit for the time spent though.

Salvatore Iovene

AstroBin Staff

IOTD Staff

Exemplary contributor

Oct 20, 2020

I agree that the acquisition is clunky, but there's no way to make it easy and fast if you have tens of nights

Kevin Morefield

IOTD Staff

Perfect post

Oct 20, 2020

Being too lazy, and shooting most objects over > 10 nights, I report all data with the data of the last capture. I don’t think most people care when the captures occurred any way. As for mosaics, when looking at others images I kind of mentally divide the integration time by the number of panes to get an idea of how much data is in each pane.

The amount of integration time in total is a squishy concept anyway. For example, I might use Ha for luminance and blend the SII in with Ha for Red and subtract some SII from the OIII in Blue. How much time is in any given pixel would be difficult to calculate. Similarly with LRGB, luminance may be 1/4 of the capture time or more than 1/2. The depth of the image will be very different but the total time that same in the two scenarios.

Jesco

Oct 21, 2020

Isn't total integration time more a measure of effort than of anticipated SNR? That's why reporting the total time makes sense for mosaics also.

Jeff Donaldson

Topic starter

Oct 21, 2020

Thanks for all the great responses. The problem with Mosaic @jesco is that if you are shooting them, depending on the number of panels is that the SNR is the total integration of one frame but the actual work is much more.

For example with my M31, I had 4 panels of 4 hrs integration with 2 hrs of Ha data, Would the total integration be 4hrs or 6hrs with ha? it was a total time of 24hrs work to get that. I just wanted some kind of field maybe to note that because it is just as much a part of the integration process as the SNR.

It's fine really, I just put that info in the description or I can even put it in the image name.

Jeff

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