How Does The New Mosaic Feature works?

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Szijártó Áron avatar
Hello and welcome! I would like to ask everyone who uses SeaStar to process their astrophotography images. How does the mosaic feature work in SeaStar? I'm new to this feature, so I'm not sure how it creates additional subframes. Does the new mosaic mode first build up the image and then enhance it, or does it work like the default mode, enhancing the image while taking subframes? If anyone has experience with this, could you please explain how it works? Thank you!
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Ralph avatar
Hi,
It starts like the normal imaging mode in the middle and adds more and more images out the center until the whole bigger frames is filled. There is a recommendation of the minimum time in the seestar app. And after some time the complete frame is filled with data - rather smooth ...
Here is an example in a German forum - with bigger selected frame already almost filled:
https://www.astrotreff.de/index.php?attachment/89566-1730089223746-jpg/
I think this is more useful than text ...
Clear skies - Ralph
Nazmus avatar
It's not like a traditional mosaic where it takes just a handful of panels. Instead each individual exposure spirals from the center until the frames take up the field of view you selected. As a result, the signal to noise ratio can be very different from one part of the image to another. It enhances the live stack as it takes them so you can slowly see it build up. Here are a few screenshots of M 31 at different stages of the mosaic. I'm working on creating an animation to show all the frames as they are captured (but not stacked). 
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Eric Gagne avatar
Cuiv the lazy geek made a video about it recently.  Maybe check it out on YouTube
Andreas Heertsch avatar
Unfortunately it is (as far as I see) not very detailed documented. The S50 scans the selected area with stacking of a few (ca. 1 min.) pictures, then it moves to the next position (witch a lot of overlapping)
At the end you get pictures like this:
as you can see, M31 is not in the center. But in the frameing window it was. The framing windows is cut to the smartphone-screen. You see also, that the non overlapping areas lack in resolution (off course).
The pitty is, that the fit-files are not stackable in Siril. Or has someone found a way to stack these framed fit-files?
Btw: the name of "Mosaic" is in S50 is "framing" (found in Stargazing => StarMap => Framing (green rectangle on the right side) )
Andreas
Szijártó Áron avatar
Andreas Heertsch:
Unfortunately it is (as far as I see) not very detailed documented. The S50 scans the selected area with stacking of a few (ca. 1 min.) pictures, then it moves to the next position (witch a lot of overlapping)
At the end you get pictures like this:
as you can see, M31 is not in the center. But in the frameing window it was. The framing windows is cut to the smartphone-screen. You see also, that the non overlapping areas lack in resolution (off course).
The pitty is, that the fit-files are not stackable in Siril. Or has someone found a way to stack these framed fit-files?
Btw: the name of "Mosaic" is in S50 is "framing" (found in Stargazing => StarMap => Framing (green rectangle on the right side) )
Andreas

Well, that sucks. If it cannot be stacked. Unless one of the popular astrophotography channels has made a video about it, for example, Deep Space Astro, aka Rich. Although I saw a video in which someone managed to stack these frames, only in Pixinsight did not watch it yet, but I saw that video. But unfortunately for me, I'm so new to that software yet. So I can only use Siril.
Andreas Heertsch avatar

Szijártó Áron:
Well, that sucks. If it cannot be stacked.


If ZWO would mark all stacked fit's connected to the same view in their names eg. with a ascending #, it would be possible to stack every view by Siril and combine theses stacked views  with Microsoft ICE. But ZWO did not.
Szijártó Áron avatar
Andreas Heertsch:
Szijártó Áron:
Well, that sucks. If it cannot be stacked.


If ZWO would mark all stacked fit's connected to the same view in their names eg. with a ascending #, it would be possible to stack every view by Siril and combine theses stacked views  with Microsoft ICE. But ZWO did not.

Hopefully, they will make their frames stackable in future updates, including changing the format of the images. Until then, we may need to find ways to enhance these images to improve their quality.
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Ralph avatar
I have tested to stack the sub frames  from a mosaic - working in siril without any trouble.
I have used a siril script (German forum astrotreff.de siril script in version 8c).
Greetings - Ralph
Szijártó Áron avatar
Ralph:
I have tested to stack the sub frames  from a mosaic - working in siril without any trouble.
I have used a siril script (German forum astrotreff.de siril script in version 8c).
Greetings - Ralph

And what script is that, if there's a specific script for processing the mosaic frames? Like seastar mosaic proccesing  or Simply OSC Mosaic Processing? Or can you use any script for it?
Ralph avatar
In the past I made mosaic in Siril Script 8c - max in German Astroforum astrotreff.de from Aludobson (Eric):
https://www.astrotreff.de/forum/index.php?thread/289728-siril-scripte-f%C3%BCr-seestar-s50/&postID=1694153#post169415
Just download and remove the suffix (.pdf) and save it the script folder defined in the menu - Properties scripts - typ.:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\siril\scripts
C:\Program Files\SiriL\scripts
I usually move the point of interest in the Seestar-App and also use the mosaic option in the seestar app. Putting all .fit files together in one folder, point the "Home-directory" of siril to this path and run the script 8c max.
I usually select the area of interest in Siril and cut the picture. Depending on the quali´ty of the results you may use oner the reult images in the result folder ...
Hope that helps - greetings
Ralph
Szijártó Áron avatar
Ralph:
In the past I made mosaic in Siril Script 8c - max in German Astroforum astrotreff.de from Aludobson (Eric):
https://www.astrotreff.de/forum/index.php?thread/289728-siril-scripte-f%C3%BCr-seestar-s50/&postID=1694153#post169415
Just download and remove the suffix (.pdf) and save it the script folder defined in the menu - Properties scripts - typ.:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\siril\scripts
C:\Program Files\SiriL\scripts
I usually move the point of interest in the Seestar-App and also use the mosaic option in the seestar app. Putting all .fit files together in one folder, point the "Home-directory" of siril to this path and run the script 8c max.
I usually select the area of interest in Siril and cut the picture. Depending on the quali´ty of the results you may use oner the reult images in the result folder ...
Hope that helps - greetings
Ralph


 Weird When I run this kind of script, the software fails to finish the script, but when I open up the image, it does look like it did the thing. What now?
Does this script work? Or can do that with the regular seastar pre-processing?
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