Veil Nebula Complex in Cygnus

[mftoet]

Modern OSC cameras can generate astonishing or at least unexpected results, can't they @ollypenrice? This is a two panel mosaic of the familiar Veil Nebula Complex in Cygnus. Captured during one night with a Nikon D810a and Tak Epsilon-180. This camera has the same sensor as the QHY367c (i.e. the 36.3 megapixel full frame (36 x 24 mm) Sony IMX094 CMOS sensor with a pixel pitch of 4.87 microns), though not cooled. Even during warm summer nights, dark current is so low, I don't bother using dark frames. That would be quite difficult in practice, because ambient temperature can drop from 22 to 12 degrees Celsius during the night. AstroPixelProcessor did an excellent job making the mosaic. The image was rather difficult to process due to the many stars in the field of view! They obscure the nebulous features. The yellowish glow to the right of NGC 6960 (the Western part of the Veil Nebula a.k.a. the Witch's Broom) with bright star 52 Cygni is not a colour gradient but actual dust or nebulas. The same is true for the tornado shaped grey 'smudge' in the lower right corner.

 

Exposure time: 6 hours, 25 minutes (5 min. subs) | Optics: Takahashi ε-180ED f/2.8 | Camera: Nikon D810a (ISO 400) | Mount: Astro-Physics Mach1 GTO | Guiding: Lacerta MGEN + Vixen 70S SQM: 21.3 - 21.5 magnitude/arcsec² | Location: Étoile-Saint-Cyrice, France | Date: August 18, 2020 | Processing: Astro Pixel Processor , PixInsight and Photoshop CC

 

Edited August 26, 2020 by mftoet

[ollypenrice]

16 minutes ago, mftoet said:

Modern OSC cameras can generate astonishing or at least unexpected results, can't they @ollypenrice? This is a two panel mosaic of the familiar Veil Nebula Complex in Cygnus. Captured during one night with a Nikon D810a and Tak Epsilon-180. This camera has the same sensor as the QHY367c (i.e. the 36.3 megapixel full frame (36 x 24 mm) Sony IMX094 CMOS sensor with a pixel pitch of 4.87 microns), though not cooled. Even during warm summer nights, dark current is so low, I don't bother using dark frames. That would be quite difficult in practice, because ambient temperature can drop from 22 to 12 degrees Celsius during the night. AstroPixelProcessor did an excellent job making the mosaic. The image was rather difficult to process due to the many stars in the field of view! They obscure the nebulous features. The yellowish glow to the right of NGC 6960 (the Western part of the Veil Nebula a.k.a. the Witch's Broom) with bright star 52 Cygni is not a colour gradient but actual dust or nebulas. The same is true for the tornado shaped grey 'smudge' in the lower right corner.

 

Exposure time: 6 hours, 25 minutes (5 min. subs) | Optics: Takahashi ε-180ED f/2.8 | Camera: Nikon D810a (ISO 400) | Mount: Astro-Physics Mach1 GTO | Guiding: Lacerta MGEN + Vixen 70S SQM: 21.3 - 21.5 magnitude/arcsec² | Location: Étoile-Saint-Cyrice, France | Date: August 18, 2020 | Processing: Astro Pixel Processor , PixInsight and Photoshop CC

 

Quite outstanding and yes, Maurice, modern OSC cameras are not like the old CCD ones I used and discarded. Your capture of the brown dusty nebulosity 'outside' the Veil loop is the best and deepest I've ever seen and I've always been particularly intrigued by this region. Brilliant.

On the other hand I've seen more Ha structure in the secondary 'broom handle' from mono HaLRGB and more Ha in the over-aching loop. But, hey...

Globally I love the 'look' of this image and the excellent star colour. And, as we both know, it was damned hot at night for this capture with an uncooled camera. I'd say that was a great Veil and, in some ways, one of the best to be found at any price!

Olly

Edited August 25, 2020 by ollypenrice

[tooth_dr]

Really beautifil image, and if you hadnt explained the orange dust on the right hand side I would have assumed some form of artefact....I'm about 1 second away now from removing my CCD and attaching my Nikon 🤣

[Laurin Dave]

Amazing image Maurice..  As Olly says so much dust!!  
Dave

[Xiga]

Fantastic image Maurice. 

Refreshing to see this in natural colour rather than NB, and i really love the colours you've achieved. 

[Sunshine]

When i enlarged this image to its full resolution, i was dumbstruck by the amount of tiny pinpoint stars, every one a perfect pinpoint. Your guiding is flawless, this is a breathtaking image, i must say.

[callisto]

Lovely star colours when at high resolution 👍

 

Mark 

[pietervdv]

Great stuff Maurice, those are indeed a lot of stars... 😁. Impressive also the speed of this setup, to go so deep after 6 hours... And you even took 2 panels in that time. 

Pieter 

[MarkAR]

Excellent image.