I think I'm happy with the Veil at last, at least for a day or two It's still a bit out there so some will find it not to their taste and that's fine.
As you all know, the Veil nebula is a supernova remnant in the northern constellation of Cygnus. This is a 2x3 panel bi-colour (Ha/OIII) mosaic with RGB stars.
Equipment used was a Takahashi FSQ-106ED scope, QSI-683 camera and Paramount ME mount. The gear is set up at SRO in California and I share it with a small group of keen imagers.
Each panel consists of roughly 8 hours of Ha, 8 hours of OIII and 24 minutes of RGB. The total is about 98 hours. Narrowband subs were all 1800 seconds. The data quality was quite good, so I was able to use drizzle to get an image scale of approx 1 arcsecond/pixel. That resulted in a mosaic of 144 megapixels which was very time consuming to process, even on a fairly fast multicore system with 24GB of RAM and a couple of SSD drives. All processing was done in PixInsight, BTW.
Higher res images are on Astrobin. I did a few crops because it's hard to take the whole mosaic in on a screen.
A remarkable image Rick. Reminds me of the Rob Gendler days when he would post marathon efforts like this.
Very kind of you, Greg!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lazjen
Simply amazing and I agree that it's APOD worthy.
How many actual nights of image gathering were required for this?
Thanks, Chris. Looks like we collected data over a total of 39 nights from mid August to early September. We were imaging other targets at the same time.
Been away over Chrissy Rick and just got on IIS and this was the first image I noticed (and had been waiting for)...t'is pretty wow mate
Yeah perhaps a couple of warts here and there but maaaate lot's of work went in here so I ain't sayin a thang..and who cares??! loved all the crops and looked at them all..the floating wizzard throwing the electric fire bolt from his left hand is awesome!
It was screeming at me to see the entire full res image though...looove to see that and pan around
Just astonishing, Rick. Run out of superlatives. Chillingly good. Best, Mike.
Thanks, Mike!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
A mega project with heaps of detail. Definitely striking and worthy of an APOD. The full res of the mosaic is really interesting to wander around.
I do have a question though. Where does the orange and green come from if this was bi colour?
Thanks, Paul. The "high res" on Astrobin is still half size. That brought the jpg file down from 72 MB to only 16 MB
The image is bi-colour in the sense that I only had Ha and OIII data but I used brightness to modulate the hue. The "flaming Ha Veil" was a first experiment with this idea. My intention was to add more interest to false colour images based on less than three "colours." This exposes detail that is hidden in the data but difficult to see as clearly in a conventional bi-colour so, IMHO at least, it's more than a mere trick for artistic effect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Been away over Chrissy Rick and just got on IIS and this was the first image I noticed (and had been waiting for)...t'is pretty wow mate
Yeah perhaps a couple of warts here and there but maaaate lot's of work went in here so I ain't sayin a thang..and who cares??! loved all the crops and looked at them all..the floating wizzard throwing the electric fire bolt from his left hand is awesome!
It was screeming at me to see the entire full res image though...looove to see that and pan around
Remote data, aaand a big mozaic...very well done
Mike
Thanks, your Mikeness I have been thinking that I need to set up a web site so I can have a Zoomify version of the full res mosaic. Like I need a new project
I'm sure I missed some warts and there were a couple I noticed but just didn't have the energy to fix. I'm trying not to get completely obsessive about this processing thing.
It's still a bit out there so some will find it not to their taste and that's fine.
I have been thinking that I need to set up a web site so I can have a Zoomify version of the full res mosaic. Like I need a new project 
