43 Panels - 74h 30′ total Integration, final Crop 18000x13000, 234 megapixel, my true first long-term project
At the beginning of this year I decided to start a long-term project capturing the beautiful majestic galactic core and include the Scorpius constellation, Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, The Dark Wolf Nebula in Lupus, Sharpless 2-27 in Ophiuchus, Corona Australis and main region of Sagittarius constellation.
This project started the data acquisition for this project on the 27th of February 2022 and ended on the 21st of October of 2022. Around 15 trips to a bortle 2 location in Al Fayoum Desert in Egypt which is 4 hours away from Cairo. Main method was taking 33 3 min subs for each panel using the Fornax Lightrack II, the mosaic was shoot manually with planning using telescopius.com. I ended up with 43 integrated panels of which 2 panels are a combined integration, one of 6 panels for the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex and the other a 2-panel integration for Blue Horse Nebula. My main gear consisted of : Rokinon 135mm, Redcat 51, Nikon Z6II stock, Nikon z6II - Astromodified and Nikon and 5300 - Full Spectrum Modified. The Fornax Lightrack II as the main tracker. Around 5 panels discarded. After every trip an integration of the mosaic would be performed using APP and towards the end the final integration took continuous 5 days to be finalized on the 6th of November. Processing the integration went through most of November and December as I had just started using Pixinsight. The Milkyway season had ended before I could include the lower region of the core but next year, I will be adding that part and re shooting regions I didn't get enough data from as well as shooting in Ha. Also, Comet C/2017 K2 appears in Sharpless 2-27 in Ophiuchus.
Majestic Galactic Core Mosaic by Ahmed Waddah, on FlickrGear: Fornax Lightrack II - Rokinon 135mm - Redcat 51 - Nikon Z6II - Nikon Z6IIA - Nikon D5300 - IDAS NG1 Filter
Settings: f2. 8 - 180" - ISO 1600 - 3200
https://www.astrobin.com/7keuqp/
Overall I am happy with the result, could have been much better but I enjoyed the experience and the time I spent under the dark skies listening to my favorite music humbled by the beauty of the majestic galactic core
This will be my final image of the year 2022 which was a great year in my astrophotography voyage.
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