East and Western Veil Nebula - SW ED80, Canon 800d

[R1k]

18th and 19th September 2020

Manchester

 

Hi guys, these are my latest and best photographs to date. I am very new to imaging (acquired my first mount and scope in May this year and shot my first DSO in June). I am happy with the Eastern Veil Nebula but struggled with processing the Western Veil and Pickering's Triangle - in particular, I would like feedback on this photograph (struggle with star control).

 

Thanks

Rik

 

Equipment:

- Skywatcher HEQ5-pro (Rowan Belt Mod)

- Canon 800d (modded)

- Skywatcher Evostar 80ED

- Altair Lightwave 0.8x focal reducer/field flattener

- ZWO ASI-120MM-mini guide camera - SW 9x50 finderscope

- 2 inch mounted Optolong L-eNhance

 

Acquisition:

- Sharpcap polar alignment, ST4 autoguiding with PHD2

- Manual acquisition using intervalometer

- Lights - Western: 20 x 360s (2 hours)

- Lights - Eastern: 32 x 360 (3 hours 12 minutes)

- Darks – 20

- Bias – 30

- Flats - 30

 

Processing:

- Raw files loaded, calibrated and integrated in APP using the algorithms "Ha-OIII extract Ha" and "Ha-OIII extract OIII". Autostretched images (1 x Ha and 1 x OIII) saved as 16 bit TIFF files

- Ha and OIII extracted TIFFs combined using Astronomy tools action set action - "Construct RGB image from channel files". Ha assigned to Red, OIII assigned to blue and green (HOO palette)

- Crop

- Further mild stretch of data using levels/curves

- S curve to increase contrast between dark sky and DSO

· Very Aggressive star reduction using star mask and Astronomy tools action set "Make stars smaller" – I think I ran the action at least 8 times

- Colormancer plugin noise reduction

- A little sharpening using Unsharp mask in PS

- Saturation and vibrance to preference

- Watermark added

 

[MarkAR]

Lovely images.

 

[R1k]

Just to add to this, I added two panels to these images last night to create a four panel mosaic of the Cygnus Loop. I processed this with a slightly different flow (starless processing then star mask blended afterwards). I much prefer the result!

 

Here is my basic workflow:

- For each of the four panels, Raw files loaded, calibrated and integrated in APP using the algorithms "Ha-OIII extract Ha" and "Ha-OIII extract OIII". Autostretched images (1 x Ha and 1 x OIII) saved as 16 bit TIFF files

- For each of the four panels, Ha and OIII extracted TIFFs combined using Astronomy tools action set action - "Construct RGB image from channel files". Ha assigned to Red, OIII assigned to blue and green (HOO palette)

- Mosaic from panels created using Microsoft ICE

- Mosaic loaded In PS, manual creation of star mask in PS for later blending onto Starless image

- Starnet++ on original mosaic image to remove stars

- Curve stretch/levels in PS on starless image

- Noise reduction on starless image

- Saturation and vibrance to preference

- Blended star mask from earlier onto starless image, 90% opacity