Orion 8 panel mosaic

I started this project in November and wrapped it up sometime in January 2026. Each of the four panels has right around 10+ hours of integration time.

Getting a good stretch was tough because Orion is so bright. I ended up doing a lot of mask-stretch-repeat cycles until I was reasonably happy with it.

My main gripe is that the four Orion panels still look

noticeably brighter than the Horsehead region, creating what feels like a big gradient across the mosaic.

Overall I’m pretty happy with it and we had some awesome weather in SC Nov-Dec to pull this off

Gear:

• ZWO ASI533MC Pro

• ZWO AM5 mount

• Optolong L-eXtreme filter

Processing workflow (pretty straightforward):

• Fast batch preprocessing in PixInsight + 2× Drizzle

• StarXTerminator

• GHS (with mask) for initial stretch

• CurvesTransformation (with mask) for further contrast tweaks

• NoiseXTerminator at 30/20

• GHS on stars only

• Recombine layers using PixelMath

• Final BlurXTerminator pass