A dusty Veil Nebula

[Fegato]

Imaging the Veil in broadband this summer was part of a longish list, but I was spurred on by seeing another  image that showed off plenty of dust beyond the Western Veil. I'm afraid I can't remember or locate that image to give credit. Anyway, as a result I went big, and this is a 6 panel mosaic. I've only managed to gather a fairly paltry amount of data, but I used the only 2 moonless nights with any clear sky here in August, and got impatient to finish it off! One panel has only 20 minutes of data - less than half the other five, and maybe not really enough for the dithering and drizzle that I applied. But I can't really spot the difference after processing - if you're better at pixel peeping than me and want to guess which panel, please do! (the mosaic is 3 across, 2 down).

The brightest part of the dust to the North West is catalogued as LDN864. The strange tadpole like thing to the south of it (which I also published separately) is LDN846. A nice spiral galaxy NGC7013 sits to the East, and above it an interesting shaped little dust cloud, uncatalogued, perhaps reminiscent of the Ghost Nebula. As for the Veil, it's bright, so even in broadband it stands out well with starless processing. Perhaps unsurprisingly the Ha is stronger than the OIII though, so some of the blue filaments you would normally see are barely visible. 

RASA 11v2 on CEM120, ZWO ASI2400MC Pro, total across 6 panels of 508 x 30s (4h 14') imaged on nights of 16th and 24th August.

[callisto]

Great capture 👍

[windjammer]

spectacular !

[WolfieGlos]

Great image!

I think the other image of dust to the north-east was on CN, I remember seeing it too.

[Fegato]

8 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

Great image!

I think the other image of dust to the north-east was on CN, I remember seeing it too.

thanks Chris! Ah yes, could have been CN, must admit I couldn't quite face trying to find it on there, as I don't think I commented at the time

[Roy Foreman]

I like it !

[Mr Spock]

Splendid! 👍

[peter shah]

exquisite....so deep

[MartinB]

That is a beauty.  Superbly processed given the great range of luminosity

[Fegato]

5 hours ago, MartinB said:

That is a beauty.  Superbly processed given the great range of luminosity

thanks Martin - and all for the positive comments!

[Ouroboros]

My goodness what a splendid image.  You only get to appreciate the grandeur of the veil by seeing it an image on that scale.  It’s not really very much data is it, if I understand your exposures properly. I guess this is down to the fast scope.  

[Fegato]

35 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

My goodness what a splendid image.  You only get to appreciate the grandeur of the veil by seeing it an image on that scale.  It’s not really very much data is it, if I understand your exposures properly. I guess this is down to the fast scope.  

Thanks - yes, it was around 45 minutes each for 5 of the panels and 20 minutes for the sixth. I guess it's not an exact science but at F/2.2 that 45 minutes is equivalent to nearly 4 hours at F/5 or 7.5 hours at F/7. Another key point that I always forget to mention is that I have Bortle 3 skies, which obviously helps rather a lot too!

[simmo39]

Wonderful image!

[Laurin Dave]

Cracking image so deep in such a short time. Robin..   I'd say it's the bottom middle panel  that's the 20 minute still mightily impressive though

Dave

[Fegato]

thanks Dave...    but no, it's not the bottom middle, it's the bottom left. I suppose it's testament to NoiseXTerminator (or perhaps I overdid it!)...    you could easily tell prior to processing, the background was much noisier in that panel.