Dear all, I have just uploaded the result of a long sought imaging project I had in the pipe for quite a while. The subject is the central part of the Vela SNR. I had already imaged the whole shebang at a much smaller scale few years ago using a 300mm lens, a mosaic of four panels that come out quite pretty and was also awarded in 2011. I always wanted however to get a larger resolution image of the area that I consider to be one of the most charming of the whole sky. I decided so to opt for another mosaic using my trusty APO 140, trying to go even deeper than the former attempt, aiming to get more details of all those delicate wisps of hydrogen and oxygen ionized that makes this area unique..
Vela SNR mosaic
Eventually after having spend *several* weeks on the target I ended up with 66 hours of data to complete 4 a panels mosaic of the central part of the nebula, an epic field that at the original resolution counts more than 50 million pixels
. Processing took quite a while to reach the result I was aiming to but I have to say that I am quite satisfied how the image come out.
On the top right corner is also visible a bit of another SNR, Puppis A, the subject of another dedicated image I have published few weeks ago.
I have reduced the web version to about 75% of the original size, sacrificing a bit of details in order to keep the total size of the JPG manageable, however be aware it is still more than 15 MB in size once downloaded.
No need to say that it is highly recommended the view at full web resolution..
Hope you will enjoy my effort..
Clear skies
Marco
