The Veil is lifted.....

[geoflewis]

Mostly I'm an imager, but once in a while I like to do some visual observing, so with the Moon out of the way and a clear calm night last night it was purely me with my mark one eyeballs and the scope hopping around a still not fully dark sky.

Having read others reports of seeing the Veil Nebula, that was my primary target last night. I've never previously seen it with my own scopes as my former Surrey skies were just too light polluted. I've seen it a couple of times using other folk's scopes, mostly large fast dobs, at Kelling Heath SP, but I thought that my C14 should be up to it even at F11, especially as earlier this year I purchased a ES 68deg 40mm 2" eyepiece and ES 2" UHC filter. I headed out at 11pm with the skies still in bright twillight. I tried several parts of the E & W Veil; nothing doing without the UHC, and mere hints of nebulosoity with the filter in place - disappointing, but maybe promising for a darker sky. Next I tried the Crescent Nebula, with much the same results - am I even looking in the right place....? I started to think that I should go back to imaging Saturn and Mars, but I really did want to spend some time just viewing with the scope, so I went for some easier targets for a while - old friends some with and others without the UHC, M27 (actually I think this looked better without the UHC than with it), M13 (my favourite visual target), M57 I upped the magnification with these last 2 to around x150 using my 25mm eyepiece.

My eye keeps being drawn to Saturn, so why not.....? I used the ES 68/40 which put it in a lovely FOV with it's moons and other stars all around, but even at that low magnification red/blue fringes due to atmospheric dispersion were very distracting so I reached for my ADC and popped in my 25mm (1.25") as the ADC will only take 1.25" eyepieces, then very quickly added my x2 TV Powermate in fromnt of the ADC. Now at appox x310 magnification Saturn looked gorgeous, very stable with Cassini clearly seen, together with colour banding on the globe, the yellow equatorial region being very prominent. Again I'm thinking am I missing a good night for imaging, but I resist the temptation. Time has ticked on by and it's now approaching 1am and the sky is visibly darker than when I started, so I head back to the Crescent Nebula with the ES 68/40 - nothing without the UHC ?, but adding the UHC reveals the main cresent and some other nebulosity, but none of the internal hatching of compression waves, nevertheless I'm clearly on it and we are still in astro twilight, so I'm confident that darker nights will reveal more.

Ok so now back to my primary target The Veil, with the UHC still in place. Oh boy, there it is ?, not as crisp as I've seen through those large dobs at Kelling in darker autumn skies, and not in a wide field with my F11 scope, but unmistakable nevertheless. Using the HC buttons, I drifted along the E Veil NGC6992 to the network nebula NGC6995, mostly a well seen smudge, but some filaments around the NGC6995 region. Heading over to the W Veil, the star 52 Cyg is as distracting visually as it is annoying to process when imaging, but the longbow curved shape of the W Veil is clearly seen, so I travel back and forth, with the best views when 52 Cyg is out of the FOV. I don't know how long I stayed here (E&W), maybe 30-45 minutes letting my eyes adjust and drink in the views, but the time flew by....

What next? Mars is now at altitude, so shall I image it as I've only had one run at it this year, but still no and I don't even look at it through the scope. Oh I know, what about the double double Eps Lyr - I can't remember the last time I looked at that, maybe years since, but it used to be a summer favourite before I got into imaging. I still had the ES 68/40 so removed the UHC and there it is, can I really split the double double with this eyepiece? YES, only just, but very clear separation with the 25mm eyepiece - that was fun.

One last look at M13, I never tire of this and then I tried NGC 7000 and the Pelican region to see what gives. It seemed pretty clear that the whole region is bathed in bright nebulosity but other than a hint of dark features in the Pelican, really nothing to see and the UHC was useless on these targets.

I'm about to pack up, so just give the sky a quick last scan with my unaided eyes - Mars is bright, but I'm not going there, but wait is that the square of Pegasus, yes, so how about the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), it's just begining to come clear of trees to my NE so lets take a look. It's the first time I've used the ES 68/40 on this target and it does not disappoint; the bright core stands out of course, but there is bright nebulosity everywhere in the FOV. I move the scope side to side easily picking up M32 and M110 with a dark sweeping curve around the bright core of M31 on the M110 side of the galaxy, marking one one of M31's more significant dust lanes - another visual first for me...!! ?.

A final look at my new friends the E&W Veil, just lovely to see, but the sky is already getting brighter, so I park the scope close the obs and head to bed at around 3am a very happy camper.

Note to self: I really must allocate more time to my eyes instead of the camera in future - there really is nothing quite like being connected to the night sky through the eyepiece...!!

Cheers, Geof

[PhotoGav]

Lovely report Geof and a great reminder to all imagers that visual can be as rewarding as imaging, sometimes even more so. It is such a pleasure to enjoy both sides of the astronomical pursuit and there is something incredibly special about seeing these objects with the good old mkI eyeball! Even better with a few friends to share the views with, someone to discuss what hint of colour you think you can perceive, how many moons you can make out, is that really the B-band in the ring system, is there a gap between the stars of that tight double or shall we just use the term ‘snowman’, etc. etc!?! Clear skies!

[jock1958]

Nice report Geof. Had the best views of Saturn last night, Cassini divisions were crisp and clear and some good detail emerged from time to time on the planet surface.

The Veil is top of my to do list but need to invest in a decent nebula filter first!

 

 

[geoflewis]

4 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

Lovely report Geof and a great reminder to all imagers that visual can be as rewarding as imaging, sometimes even more so. It is such a pleasure to enjoy both sides of the astronomical pursuit and there is something incredibly special about seeing these objects with the good old mkI eyeball! Even better with a few friends to share the views with, someone to discuss what hint of colour you think you can perceive, how many moons you can make out, is that really the B-band in the ring system, is there a gap between the stars of that tight double or shall we just use the term ‘snowman’, etc. etc!?! Clear skies! 

Thanks Gav,

I read a lot about folks sending their equipment remote to avail better skies for imaging and I understand that, but one of the reasons that I opted for an observatory here in the UK (albeit I did move to Norfolk to get better skies) was so that I could mix the visual experience with imaging. I guess I culd do both if I had the resources for both a remote facility and maybe a decent sized dob at home, but I couldn't afford that, so I'm very happy to have the option of doing both from my home.

I try to get my neighbours over once in a while to share some of the more appealing views, e.g. the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, M31, M42, M13, M57, etc, so I get a real kick out of the odd wow from them, especially their children when it's not too late for them...

Cheers, Geof

[geoflewis]

3 hours ago, jock1958 said:

Nice report Geof. Had the best views of Saturn last night, Cassini divisions were crisp and clear and some good detail emerged from time to time on the planet surface.

The Veil is top of my to do list but need to invest in a decent nebula filter first!

Thanks Jock,

Yep, Saturn looked pretty good for me too and I was very tempted to fire up the laptop and image both it and Mars, but then I would have missed out the lovely views of the Veil and even seeing that dust lane in M31 was a treat. All together I was out there the best part of 3.5 hours I think and I loved every minute of it.

I purchased the ES68/40 this past winter so that I could get better views of M42 Orion Nebula as the FOV with my existing eyepieces with the C14 was significantly cut down from my old 10" Meade. Once I'd got that it was a quick step to getting the UHC filter - did a bit of reading on whether to get the OIII, but the UHC seemed to offer a wider range of targets and it certainly did the job for me last night. I do have a 1.25" OIII so I should probably try that with my other eyepieces to see how that performs.

Good luck getting to see the Veil soon.

Geof

[John]

Great report Geof

I can well recall my first sighting of the Veil nebula with an ED100 refractor and a Baader UHC-S filter. I was thrilled because I had no idea back then that amateur scopes could even show this exotic object.

I have found out since that an O-III filter is "the" tool for this object - the UHC makes it visible but with an O-III filter and a dark sky you can really explore the Veil complex in some detail, even with relatively small aperture scopes.

When it's well placed I still try and observe it often - it's a complex and rewarding object, by far my favourite summer DSO

 

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, John said:

Great report Geof

I can well recall my first sighting of the Veil nebula with an ED100 refractor and a Baader UHC-S filter. I was thrilled because I had no idea back then that amateur scopes could even show this exotic object.

I have found out since that an O-III filter is "the" tool for this object - the UHC makes it visible but with an O-III filter and a dark sky you can really explore the Veil complex in some detail, even with relatively small aperture scopes.

When it's well placed I still try and observe it often - it's a complex and rewarding object, by far my favourite summer DSO

 

Hi John,

I never even considered using my 4” TSAPO100Q, which is strictly a fairly fast short tube APO for imaging, but based on your experience I’ll have to give it a try. That will allow me to use my 1.25” eyepieces with the OIII filter without worrying too much about the FOV, which will be huge in comparison to the C14.

Many thanks for the feedback, Geof

[Stu]

Excellent report Geof, a great session! As a visual observer, I would always want to be hogging the eyepiece, keep those cameras away!

Definitely give the Veil and North America Nebula a go with a widefield scope, less detail but you may be able to fit the whole lot in the field of view if you can get to 3.6 or so degrees. Lovely sight.

[geoflewis]

4 minutes ago, Stu said:

Excellent report Geof, a great session! As a visual observer, I would always want to be hogging the eyepiece, keep those cameras away!

Definitely give the Veil and North America Nebula a go with a widefield scope, less detail but you may be able to fit the whole lot in the field of view if you can get to 3.6 or so degrees. Lovely sight.

Thanks Stu,

I have the 4” APO piggy-backed on the C14, so it was available last night, just that I never even considered using it....?. It’s currently carrying my QSI CCD, but I can easily swap that to the C14 to make it available for visual observing.

I’ll get about 3.5 degree FOV with my Meade 40mm Super Plossl with the TSAPO100Q, which will take the 1.25” OIII filter, so if the Veil shows up it will be interesting to compare with the 2” ES 68/40 + UHC.

Cheers, Geof

[Stu]

3 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

I’ll get about 3.5 degree FOV

That's well worth doing, might feel a little tight seeing the whole complex framed with clear dark sky around it, but pretty good. A lovely view.

[geoflewis]

3 minutes ago, Stu said:

That's well worth doing, might feel a little tight seeing the whole complex framed with clear dark sky around it, but pretty good. A lovely view.

Maybe tonight ?, but we have cloud building currently, thought that happened last night then mostly cleared by 11pm...

[Stu]

49 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Maybe tonight ?, but we have cloud building currently, thought that happened last night then mostly cleared by 11pm...

Fingers crossed.

At some point I hope we have a heavy downpour followed by some clear sky. The rain clears all the muck out of the atmosphere and you can get some lovely transparency for nebulae then.

[Eastman]

Great report Geof, I had the same experience with the Veil, first nothing there and I went on observing other objects. When I returned later on there it was. It really need a dark sky.

 

[geoflewis]

3 minutes ago, Eastman said:

Great report Geof, I had the same experience with the Veil, first nothing there and I went on observing other objects. When I returned later on there it was. It really need a dark sky.

 

I’m just waiting to head out again to try out the OIII filter with my 4” APO. It took me quite a while to find the filter as I only used it a couple of times soon after I bought it in 2012 and we moved home in 2016, but it’s now ready and waiting for me in the observatory ?

[geoflewis]

Ok, so I've just come back indoors temporarily after a frustrating session looking at the Veil Nebula region with the 4" TS APO, Meade 40mm Super Plossl and Lumicon OIII filter. Unfortunately whilst I have clearish skies the transparancy is dreadful, maybe 4/10, very milky skies and as yet no Milky Way. That said I can definitely see hints of NGC6992 & NGC6995 which is promising, but NGC6960 is proving very elusisve, thinking I get it with AV, but then moments later I'm not so sure - that may just be that the poor transparancy has passing thick and thin patches. However, we were still in nautical twilight here, with astro twilight not until after midnight, so I plan to head back out there a bit later to see what gives. Watch this space....

Geof

[John]

I had a peek at the same targets with my 130mm refractor a little while ago (as a break from Saturn !) and managed to get them all using a 24mm Panoptic and the Lumicon O-III filter. The "Witches Broom" section (NGC6960) was the harder one to spot and needed a little averted vision to get it to pop out a bit. Transparency is probably more like 5-6/10 here.

You might do better with a slightly shorter focal length eyepiece - less field but darker background sky ?

[geoflewis]

43 minutes ago, John said:

I had a peek at the same targets with my 130mm refractor a little while ago (as a break from Saturn !) and managed to get them all using a 24mm Panoptic and the Lumicon O-III filter. The "Witches Broom" section (NGC6960) was the harder one to spot and needed a little averted vision to get it to pop out a bit. Transparency is probably more like 5-6/10 here.

You might do better with a slightly shorter focal length eyepiece - less field but darker background sky ?

Thanks John,

I've just come back in from another 45 min session, with a darker, but still too bright sky with poor transparancy. It seemed almost like dawn out there at 1:00am, with a huge light dome coming from Norwich about 15 miles away to the north, something that isn't usually so bad and also smaller light domes from more local small towns in the south and west. I measured the sky with my DSM sky app meter which gave a reading of 18.19 (mag 5.15), whereas a fully dark sky here regularly reads better than SQM 21. I know the phone app meter isn't the most reliable but even so...Basically  think that there is just too much moisture in the air tonight and it's both being lit up by LP as well as me trying to observe through it.

Nevertheless with AV I could clearly see the full sweep of the eastern Veil, but the witches broom remained stubornly elusive and absolutely no hint of Pickering. I didn't try any other eyepieces, so that's a great suggestion for a darker night in the coming weeks. At least I now know that I have a few options to view this spectacular target with both the C14 and the 4" APO. Roll on autumn....

Cheers, Geof

[geoflewis]

On 14/07/2018 at 17:26, John said:

I have found out since that an O-III filter is "the" tool for this object - the UHC makes it visible but with an O-III filter and a dark sky you can really explore the Veil complex in some detail, even with relatively small aperture scopes.

On 15/07/2018 at 00:30, John said:

You might do better with a slightly shorter focal length eyepiece - less field but darker background sky ? 

Hi John and everyone,

I got out there again last night with much improved transparancy (my phone app gave a 20.8 SQM reading) and popped a 25mm Sirius Plossl eyepiece in to the 4" APO with the OIII. BINGO , I could fairly easily see both E & W veils with NGCs 6992 through 6995 being particularly pleasing. I swapped the 25mm for my 40mm Meade Super Plossl and whilst I could see the E Veil pretty easily, the W Veil (witches broom) became difficult in the brighter background. The suggestion of using a short FL eyepiece really worked thanks, so that tempted me to try my 12mm TV Nagler with the OIII, but it wasn't having it - a step too far I think...!!

Ok, so with success with the 4" APO I now wanted to try the OIII with the C14, so I popped in the 40mm Meade with the OIII and OMG what a difference. Both E and W Veil were very clear and all of the witches broom popped out of the background sky from the wide bristles past 52 Cyg to the broom handle. Seeing the 'smoke rolls' (my description) of nebulosity along the handle was delightful. Unfortunately the aFOV of the Meade Super Plossl is only 44 degrees, so it's not a good fit for such a large target with the C14, but it was definitely fun travelling up and down both curves and 52 Cyg was no longer the distraction that it had been with the UHC filter. I even think I got glimpses of Pickering between E & W this time. I had another go with the ES 68/40 and 2" UHC and it fared better tonight than a couple of nights ago, with the much wider FOV providing more relaxing views, but by now I was very well dark adapted, so that no doubt will have helped. The contrast, howerver, was not a patch on the that seen with the OIII, which wins hands down in performance over the UHC, so I guess I'm now in the market for a 2" OIII to use with the ES68/40....??

Thanks again for the great advice, the last 3 nights visual observing has been an eye opener for me. I'm definitely going to be revisiting this target over and over as we pass from astro twilight into full darkness in the next few weeks, once the Moon is again out of the way of course.

Cheers, Geof