Veil wide field first light new mount

[Phillyo]

Veil Nebula in Cygnus taken in my back garden in Lincoln.

Camera: Canon 450D Modded
Telescope: WO Megrez 72 APO DDG
Mount: EQ6 with EQMod

Captured in APT and controlled via CdC.

11 x 10min unguided (had to delete 9 due to clouds), stacked in DSS and processed in Pixinsight then photoshop CS6.

20 flats
20 bias

I need to learn how to reduce the stars. Would taking some shorter subs and blending them in as a separate layer work perhaps?

Comments/criticisms welcome as always but I'm fairly pleased with it.

Phil

[tingting44]

lovely image and unguided too!

i see you stack with DSS and process in PI..... i would stack in PI and not with DSS tho, a lot better results and its quite amazing how much of a difference just this makes in the final stack

[Phillyo]

I only have the trial version of PI so not sure if that tool is available? I'll have a look.

Thank you.

Phil

[Martin-Devon]

That's a really nice widefield Phil - you've done well here. To reduce star size, the easiest way is probably to use one of the actions in either Noel Carboni's set or Annie's action set - both are very quick and effective.

Martin

[Phillyo]

I've just put it through PI using a star mask and the Morphological Transformation process as suggested by a friend and it has made a massive difference to the stars, makes it look so much better!

Phil

[tingting44]

amazing how much difference it can make with the same data

great picture

[Phillyo]

Thanks Martin. I tried to stack it in PI but it would only register 2 of the 11 images I'll try it another time when I get more data and not as many clouds in the way.

Phil