Racing against the Moon, Sun, and the meridian, on two consecutive nights I captured Panel G in luminance, red, green, and blue. The mosaic seen above consists of all six panels in luminance only.

Now having all data in LRGB, I created Panel G in color. The image above shows accurate star color and also variations in the arms of the galaxy as expected.

Try as I might I could not get Astro Pixel Processor (APP) to create the grand mosaic consisting of five monochrome panels and one color panel. At the very end of the process it complained it could not create a mosaic consisting of just one panel.

In a couple weeks when the Moon recedes I will capture RGB data for Panel F on the first night. Hopefully that will satisfy APP. With luck I’ll get a string of clear nights as the Fall season approaches.

If you have been following the progress of the mosaic and you’ve wondered how I derived the panel naming scheme, this explains it:

That screenshot came from a program called Computer Assisted Astronomy (C2A) by Philippe Deverchère. I highly recommend it. It offers the ability to create User Catalogs. I created a catalog named “M31 Mosaic” that contains 8 records. A record defines each of the eight rectangles (or panels) that you see. The size of each panel represents the field-of-view of my Atik 314E camera and William Optics ZenithStar 71 telescope. Furthermore, I adjusted the position and orientation of each panel so as to provide sufficient overlap to satisfy Astro Pixel Processor (APP).

The body of the galaxy is represented by the large ellipse. As I’ve come to learn, the perimeter of the ellipse captures the very outer edges of the galaxy which is not visible in my mosaic, so because of that I’ve decided not to capture panels H and D. Perhaps one day after I acquire more data I will go back and capture them.

Captured three additional panels last night: C, E, and F. The plan was to also capture G but a cloud bank interfered with F. Waited for clouds to pass but by then G was not possible due to the meridian and dawn.

The weather forecast says that this coming Saturday may be favorable. It will be my last chance to capture G for two weeks due to the Moon.

Six more panels to go in Luminance! And then to do eight panels in Red, eight panels in Green, and eight panels in Blue. Lot’s to do but the results are encouraging.

For perspective here is Panel A:

and here is Panel B:

Astro Pixel Processor (APP) for imaging processing and mosaic creation. INDI/Ekos used for image capture.