In the article Using Astro Mosaic for Slooh.com Telescopes, I explained how to plan a mosaic using Astro Mosaic by Jarmo Ruuth. I also explained how to book missions and briefly explained what you do with the images once you have them.

This article walks you through the assembly of the mosaic using the Slooh.com PNG images.

Note: If you prefer to use the FITS files from your missions and use PixInsight, I explain how to assemble your mosaic in Assembling a Mosaic Using PixInsight.

About the Target

I took a mosaic of the Barnard 68 complex. It’s a region of space where there are a number of dark nebulae. A dark nebula is a cloud of thick dust and gas that is so thick that it blocks light coming from behind it. Viewed in a field of stars, a dark nebula looks like a hole or carved-out region within the field of stars.

Barnard 68 itself is a smaller dark nebula which is sometimes referred to as the Black Hole because it looks pretty dramatic when viewed up close. To the left of Barnard 68 is Barnard 72, the Snake Nebula. Below Barnard 68 are Barnard 69, 70, and 74. At the bottom right of the image is another dark nebula called LDN 81.

Final Image

This is the final image created from 4 Slooh.com PNG images:

The dark nebulae are clearly resolved and there’s good color in the stars in the surrounding region.

Planning and Executing the Mosaic

I planned the mosaic using Astro Mosaic and executed the plan by booking four Slooh.com coordinate missions using the Generic processing recipe.

Slooh.com generated a luminance and LRGB image for each mission and I downloaded each file from My Photo Hub.

If you want to follow along in this tutorial, here are the four images Slooh.com produced. The only processing that was done on these images was to resize them to fit on this webpage:

Image 1:

Image 2:

Image 3:

Image 4:

Downloading and Installing Microsoft ICE

Microsoft ICE, or Image Composite Editor, is a free application by Microsoft Research that can assemble the individual images from a mosaic into one larger image.

Download Microsoft ICE here.

Once you have it downloaded, run the downloaded file by double-clicking it, and follow the installation instructions on your screen.

Using Microsoft ICE to Assemble the Mosaic

Use the following directions to automatically assemble the mosaic:

  1. Start Microsoft ICE
  2. Click the second icon at the top-left of the screen.

    Select the files that make up the mosaic – you can select them all at once.
  3. Click the Next button at the uppe-right of the screen

    After a few seconds you should see the assembled mosaic behind a grid of squares.
  4. Click Next at the upper-right of the screen
  5. At the crop screen, click Next at the upper-right of the screen
  6. Click the Export to disk button and select a location and filename for your final image

The image is pretty dark, so we have to slightly adjust it to make the nebulae in the region more apparent.

Adjusting The Image

Use the following directions to adjust the image:

  1. Point your browser to Photopea.com
  2. Select File – Open and open the file you saved using Microsoft ICE
  3. From the menu, select Image – Adjustments – Curves
  4. Click the line at the location shown to place a control point:

5. Move the control point to the left as shown in the following image

6. Click Ok to commit the change

7. Select File – Export As and choose a format to export your file from Photopea.com

You have now created your final image and can share it (note that the image already contains the Slooh.com logo, so you don’t have to add it yourself).

Conclusion

In this article, you learned how to assemble a mosaic using Microsoft ICE and you learned how to adjust your final image using Photopea.com.