This is a mosaic of Markarian's Chain, a galaxy group in Leo that I obtained using a Takahashi 150 on iTelescope from Spain. My first attempt set the center of the field on "The Eyes" (I'll let you figure out which galaxy pair this refers to in the image). The resultant image cut off M84 (fuzzy blob at center top). I then took a series of images centered on M86 (bigger blob towards center) which nicely included M84, but did not include all the other parts of the Chain at the bottom of the image. Two techniques used in making this mosaic that I have found useful: 1) Pixinsight mosaic mode (Process>ImageRegistration>StarAlignment) where working mode is Register/Union-Mosaic. Takes some fiddling to figure out the correct reference and target mode, but the end result is very worthwhile. Why? While Photoshop has powerful mosaic tools, it is most useful for rectilinear type of alignments, and for me becomes very painful trying to figure out rotational misalignment.... which is very common. So... Pixinsight takes care of the rotational alignment as if by magic. 2) Prodigital software "Astronomy Tools" plug-in for Photoshop. In this case, I used the "vertical banding noise reduction" feature to remove annoying slight vertical banding from the CCD.
So there you have it, the full Markarian's Chain!
