Veil Nebula Madness: Ha and OIII mosaics

[Uranium235]

Well, how blessed have we been with this weeks weather? Its been clear every night this week (apart from tonight) so it gave me the opportunity to expand on the Veil widefield I did a couple of weeks ago by adding two more panels and increasing the exposure to 2.5 hours per panel. I then moved on to adding some OIII, at 2 hours per panel, but only managing to get four of them before I started to get a bit weary of imaging the same thing for a whole week - Andromeda is getting into a good position now so I was keen to make a start on that (have ignored it for the last two years) with a 4 pane mosaic.

By the time I packed up (3am) there was a glorious sight in the East - Jupiter, Orion and Taurus.... so much to look at, so I decided to whip out the bins for a bit of a gander before going off to bed. Shame though, as that will be the only time I see M42 until about December as from now til then it will disappear behind a massive tree.

Ive cropped the Ha into smaller chunks for a bit of pixel peeping. The NEQ6 performed well on this, hardly any flex, good PA obtained via polarfinder.exe, and a PHD graph as flat as a flat thing. The only minor scare ive had is when the DEC axis started making a very unhealthy chattering sound last night - as if something wasnt meshing properly. Had a little mess with the end float, and it seems to have made it go away.... for now. God, how hard is it to remove the end float cover without the correct tool?? Very hard, I ended up getting out the screwdriver and hammer to tap it loose.

I hope the 6 panel version displays ok, it looks a little different when rescaled to fit the browser.

Veil Nebula Complex:

Ha version: 2.5 hours per panel, 6 panels

HOO version: 2.5h (Ha_Red), 2h (OIII Green/Blue)

ED80 (0.85x), Atik 314L+, NEQ6

Setpoint: -10

Calib: Flats & Bias

Guiding: Excellent

Thanks for looking!

Rob

First, the Ha widefield - 6 panels worth:

Next, a crop of the Broom:

Then, a crop of the Wisp:

Now, a four pane colour version with OIII data, note how much more detail and separate filaments the OIII adds, well worth getting.

Oh, and synth green version for those who like that flavour

Finally, a little nibble at M31, just 40min per panel (3 panels). A really good test of the new CCD CLS 1.25" filter, which did a good job in giving me a nice, low background level on my subs. I will return to this at a later date to have a proper go at it.

[Fay]

you have some lovely results there, very nice

Fay

[Uranium235]

Oh dear, the widefield didnt display how it should. So Ive now attached a resized version (60% smaller) that should display better:

[Uranium235]

you have some lovely results there, very nice

Fay

Cheers Fay, its been nice to get a good run of clear sky to finish a project after such a wet summer. Lets hope we get more of the same!

[Gina]

Wonderful We didn't have such luck with the weather here in the south-west

[Uranium235]

Thanks Gina though I think we're all in for a bit of cloud for another couple of weeks. So its back to tinkering and window shopping!

[Avdhoeven]

Very nice! I love the veil images...

[farunj]

That's awesome!!

[squeaky]

You know... some people really make you sick - showing off all their super duper images

Others, however, set a standard to aim for

I'm not going to tell you how those make me feel. HEH !!

<hint>amazing</hint>

[Shibby]

Impressive stuff Rob!! It'd make a great print, particularly once you finish the mosaic in colour.

The dedication has certainly paid off. I know exactly how twitchy one can get when focusing on just the one target for so long!

[Uranium235]

Impressive stuff Rob!! It'd make a great print, particularly once you finish the mosaic in colour.

The dedication has certainly paid off. I know exactly how twitchy one can get when focusing on just the one target for so long!

Good idea Lewis, I hadnt thought about getting it printed. Hmmm, I know a 314 can produce A4 sized images so im probably looking at A2 with this mosaic. I wonder if Jessops can print that large? Might be better to ask for a smaller one first to see how it looks before forking out for a big print. Depends on what format they accept too, if it were going on a wall I'd wanted printed from a 16bit .tiff file as the Jpeg version always seems to generate artifacts when resized.

[tommy_h]

Very nice image.

With narrowband filters you get good control over the masses of stars in this region.

A mosaic would be wonderful

Thomas

[Tim]

Oh thats nice stuff Rob, you must be dead chuffed!

The Veil has to be one of the most satisfying of all DSO's to photograph, and even visually it is pretty stunning in a big scope.

Cheers

Tim

[martin_h]

I had one of my mosaics printed, Max Spielmann, did the trick for me I think I got mine dome at 16" x 20" and Im sure I used a PNG file.