Nebula needs more data, but happy with the number of stars

[Demonperformer]

Centred on the Veil Nebula, using the Canon 1000d + 50mm lens, this is a stack of 32/40 120s lights (ISO 800, f/4) with a 15s gap between them, together with 10 darks and 50 bias (really must start organizing some flats sometime), taken using EOS utils. The SQM reading was 18.11 and the temperature was 25°C.

The resultant image was processed in PS7.0 and it has been resized to 30% of the original size for upload. I have also included a full-size 600*600px area around the Veil itself, rotated into a more normal viewing angle.

Clearly, this is a lot fainter than the North American Nebula, which I got a couple of nights ago, but both halves of the nebula can be seen in the scaled-dwon version (if you know what you are looking for!) and at the original size, the nebulosity across the 'top' and the iconic shape of NGC 6960 are clearly seen. As an aside, the open cluster NGC 6940 also stands out well (slightly to the right of the Veil and about half way from it to the top of the image).

But widefield images are not about the detail in the nebulae, but the overall impression of the sky in that area. And this image shows (some of!) the thousands of stars that crowd the Cygnus superhighway.

One thing I do like (and have learned) about this image can be demonstrated by this individual sub:

That horrible orange line is a telephone cable, which appears (in slightly different places) in each of the 40 subs I took, but PS stacking has totally got rid of it.

All-in-all, I am reasonably happy with my second outing into Cygnus widefield, but any constructive criticism of my efforts will be welcome.

Thanks.

[wimvb]

Nice!

Looking at images posted on this forum, tends to make you forget how faint these objects really are.

Yours is great reminder.

If you want to pull out more, you'll have to take longer subs. I usually aim for 4 - 5 minute subs for widefield (no guiding, and no 10-Micron mount).