Widefield Veil Nebula

[jgs001]

I've been meaning to try this for a while, and last night, I went to a 'Stars' shoot with a local photography group. As expected, I was the only one there with a tracking mount.... the rest were all working on single shots of the Milky Way with some foreground. The talk was on doing a couple more with more 'normal' astrophotography... stacking etc.

 

Anyway.. after some issues with my Astrotrac, that I thought were mechanical from the noises, but turned out to be run down AA batteries (phew), I was able to start capturing..... I only got 12 usable subs, before the dew decided to make it's presence felt, so this is nowhere near as many subs as I wanted... next time.

 

so... 60d, Sigma 150mm Macro lens @f/2.8, ISO400, 12x178seconds (timing issue on my intervalometer)..

 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Nice clean background and the Witch's Broom and Eastern Veil are coming through nicely. It's a great target for mid telephoto lenses. I was thrilled when I managed to pick it up with my 135mm Takumar but I only got 12 minutes due to cloud coming over, it's high on my target list to reshoot it.

[wxsatuser]

Thats quite reasonable for the short subs, the Sigma does very well wide open.

[Psychobilly]

Fits nicely in the FOV   I had the same worrying noises from my Astrotrac last weekend - fortunately  it also turned out to be battery related ...

I forgot to pack the PSU for the dew heaters and my dew  control has unusual power plugs fitted so I had to resort to a couple of chemical hand warmers and they struggled

Peter...

[Moonshane]

Nice! You also caught OC NGC 6940 bottom right.

[Pete Presland]

The Witch's Broom and Eastern Veil are showing excellently, nice colour as well!

[toxic]

arrh spots before my eyes theres a lot of stars there john nice image.

[Coco]

Very nice John.. Great/huge field of view

[jgs001]

Thanks Peeps... 

Peter, I'm glad it's not just me that felt very concerned over the noises... and I'm very glad it was such a simple (and cheap) solution .

Thanks for the ID Shane, I was wondering about that.. I'm waiting on the astrometry post on flickr... I'll bring that over once it's complete. 

I'm hoping that adding a bunch of longer subs will gather the fainter detail through the centre. I'm also thinking some shorter subs for star colour would be a good idea. I'm not really used to imaging at f/2.8, and I'm not certain exactly how far to push the subs... I'm sure the brighter stars were blown out on the individual subs. 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Is the astrometry group on Flickr working at the moment? I know there have been a lot of problems recentely, and I haven't been able to get it to plate solve anything.

[jgs001]

It looks like it's not been working for several months. That's a pity.

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