Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic – Panel Definitions

By B. Morgan | August 5, 2019

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

Panel Definitions – H, F, G, B, A, E, C, D – reading top to bottom, left to right.

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.