The Veil Nebula - NGC6992

[peeb61]

Hi Folks,
Here is my first attempt at the Veil Nebula.
Took the opportunity after arriving home late from a family dinner.
(Rolled off the roof at 10.30 -12.10am). I imaged the usual's in a half hearty way....keeping the southern cloud build up in the corner of my eye. After almost 2 weeks of bad weather I came up with this image. For me I was quite surprised.

My plans are to keeps gathering data and stacking over the coming weeks, weather permitting and seeing what happens.

This composition is 3 images 2x4min + dark and 1x3min + dark. (All 1600ISO)
Skywatcher 102 Achromatic and Orion Broadband DSF with Canon 350D.

Image processed in DSS, Photoshop, Noiseware and cropped to fit.

Thanks for looking.

Paul

[multiweb]

It's starting to look good already. With more data you'll have a stunning image.:thumbsup:

[RB]

Agreed it's looking great so far and more data will produce a top image.
There seems to be a slight cyan colour cast across the whole image and looking at the histogram shows the RGB channels are misaligned.
Adjusting them back to balance will give you a very nice colour rendition of this beautiful neb.

Looking forward to your additional data.

:thumbsup:

[peeb61]

Thanks Marc,
As you can see its a work in progress.

Andrew, you mentioned "Adjusting the histogram back to balance" Any chance of a crash course?
(Could the Cyan colour be the result of the broadband filter?)

Paul

[RB]

Sure thing Paul.

Very quickly in PS navigate to Image | Adjustments | Channel Mixer
(have your histogram showing on screen with all three channels showing)
I adjusted the settings to (only a quick edit):

Red Ch: R=100, G=16, B=18 Constant = -2
Grn Ch: R=0 , G=100, B=0, Constant = -7
Blu Ch: R=0, G=0, B=100, Constant = -8

Basically I tweak the constants and slight adjustment in the red channel to bring the histogram back nicely to a balanced curve.

Try it and adjust it to suit and once you add more data it will boost the colour saturation too.

(I'd say using the BB filter has shifted the colours)

[peeb61]

Thanks Andrew,
I will fiddle...your a real gentleman!

Paul

[Matty P]

Looking good Paul, some really nice detail is starting to show already.

I'm looking forward to seeing more when you add some more data.

Keep us posted. :)

[peeb61]

Thanks Mate,
Will do Matty...watch this space!

Paul

[jase]

Indeed good advice provided by RB. The image has potential, but you'll be limited on what you can do due to the lack of data. Simply not enough. Look forward to seeing more.

[beren]

:)Very nice well done

[Alchemy]

its coming along nicely, more data does help......its not so long ago that 1/2 dozen 5 minute images were the standard here on IIS amongst the digital users, since then some have gone on to do stacks of 20 or more and it does show in the final product. it does gobble into the valuable available time though.

cheers clive.

[Stargazer292]

Hi Paul,
here's what I obtained out of your image just playing around with levels and Brightness and Contrast in Photoshop.

[peeb61]

Thanks Clive, Beren and Jase, for your tidy words and input.

Andrew...that sure looks a treat, its amazing what a second pair of eyes and knowledge can do. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I was out last night and took another 8 images at 3min each.

I will fiddle and re-stack and post back.

Thanks everyone again.

Paul

[Jen]

:thumbsup::thumbsup: Nice pic Paul :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[peeb61]

Thanks Jen,

I had another crack at the Veil last night, admittedly seeing wasn't any better than the previous night considering it only rises enough from my location to see it but doesn't climb very high.

I tried to stack the previous nights images but came out as a bad mosaic so I stacked only last nights efforts.

I'm still trying to get my teeth around this processing thing...pretty tough.
Every time I fiddled it appears worst and in the end got too confused.

I did take 12 images at 3min (1600iso) a piece but DSS rejected 4.

Paul

[winensky]

Nice image and not a bad effort considering the ammount of data others aquire for this object. Not a lot of photons for the region it covers.

[Stargazer292]

;)

You're welcome mate;)