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Cygnus Loop / Veil Complex widefield & close-ups

Grinde

By Grinde
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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Grinde

Grinde

Posted
Posted

Hi Guys!

Had some luck with the weather (or so I thought) , so I set the gear up shooting towards the Veil Complex, grabbing the whole thing in one go. "Unfortunately" the sky turned into fire, right after I went back home leaving the gear running all night. One of the most dramatic northern lights for ages appeared in front of my target :) The same night & area from which Göran Strand (gost) shot his fantastic 360 degrees aurora

The data was quite horrible so I had to throw most of it away, leaving me with just 2*20min Ha subs & 2*20min O3 subs...

I did what I could with the data, I also tried making a synthetic RGB-layer for the stars, by just mixing Ha & O3 (since it was all I had)

EQ6 running EQmod (Wow, I finally did it!)

FSQ-106EDX

SBIG STL-11K

ST-80 + Lodestar for guiding

Stacking in MaximDL, everything else in Photoshop

Exposures:

Ha: 2*20min

O3: 2*20min

No flats

8*20min darks

Ha/O3/O3 as R/G/B

Here's the full frame!Click image for 50% size

6308691979_d471400d36_b.jpg

Click here for the 100% sized version, for us pixelpeepers

Eastern Veil close-up, cropped to match kaf-8300 sensor, Click image for 100% size

6308691613_368d164b21_b.jpg

Witch's Broom close-up, cropped to match kaf-8300 sensor, Click image for 100% size

6309212488_38269913fb_b.jpg

Here's a rather strange one, I tried making the stars go away, leaving the nebula exposed, looks kinda neat, don't you think?

6308642743_309cdaaac0_z.jpg

Thanks for watching!

Jonas

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foundaplanet

foundaplanet

Posted
Posted

Presented in its smaller parts this always reminds me of "silly string" ;).

Presented in the way you have it here it always makes me think of HR Gigers alien lurking in the shadows :), and especially so with these images.

Fantastic! The colours are wonderful. Great stuff :headbang:

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Magnum

Magnum

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These are my favourite ever pics of the veil complex, the colours and detail are amazing, might try this with my Equinox 66 APO and .63 reducer + Canon 400D if its clear, should be a similar field of view.

Lee

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Grinde

Grinde

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Thank you all for your kind comments!

This was the hardest image so far to process, mostly since I had to throw away most of the data due to the northern light.

When I tried reducing the noise, I got results looking too superficial, that's when I got the idea of reducing/removing the stars. All those targets makes fine pictures on their own, but it was fantastic to frame the whole complex in one shot!

These are really different and interesting. I've never seen the nebulosity look so three dimensional. I like them all! I wonder if you de-starred using Dust And Scrtaches?

Olly

Correct! I started out with Noels "find brighter stars" action and increased the radius to be sure to cover the stars completely. Then applied a strong Dust and Scratches to the selection only. Finally I applied a weaker Dust and Scratches to the whole image, to remove the small stars that slipped past the star-select action.

I find that Dust and Scratches can hurt the bright details in the nebulosity if applied to hard (which was needed for the brighter stars, therefore the star-mask).

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