Photometric Mosaic Question

Aaron Wilhelm

Thanks for the timely and informative videos on PI's photometric mosaic script.  

Given that the script uses photometry and plate solved images to join panels, I'm wondering whether this script allows us to safely push the boundaries of conventional wisdom regarding advised overlap percentages of the panels when acquiring data.

Of course targets near the poles need much more overlap than do targets near the equator, so there's no simple answer here.  Specifically, I'm wondering whether I could get away with a 10% (or less!) overlap for an object around the 40 degree declination line (Gammi Cygni nebula, say).  I should add that I'm imaging in narrowband and generally have good to excellent stars to the edges of my frames.

Any thoughts/musings on this are greatly appreciated!

Aaron W.

BlockHead

I think the point is that yes, you probably could get away from thin overlaps in terms of the alignment of panels aspect.... but this isn't the main point! The idea is to make the joins/seams as invisible as possible. The larger the overlap the better the calculation of the local gradients and the more freedom you have to make adjustments and achieve invisible seams. So the reason for health overlaps is invisible stitching.

-the Blockhead