Veil Nebula (NGC 6960) (Dan Gallo)

Veil Nebula (NGC 6960)

Trying out a HyperStar on my Edge HD 8" scope, which brings the focal ratio down to F/2.

70 x 40s frames in Ha

85 x 16s frames in OIII

2 sets of darks to match the above exposures, along with 2 sets of flats, and some bias frames.

Stacked and processed in PixInsight.

I'm still learning the best settings for everything, but here are some things I want to figure out / improve on:

- The stars in two of the corners are elongated, so I'll need to collimate the HyperStar to resolve this, I believe.

- ASI1600MM-Cool was used for acquisition. After a lot of reading, I decided to use Unity Gain (gain 139, and offset 21), and one of the posts on Cloudy Nights said about trying to aim for a Median ADU in Sequence Generator Pro of ~850, which is why I went with the exposure durations above to get that value. Does this sound the right approach?

- I still need to try and figure out how to bring out more detail of objects and maintain a nice dark background. Maybe I just need to do a lot more exposures and have more data to stack? I always find it hard to get a very dark background, and bring out a decent amount of detail. This final image was further enhanced in Lightroom after exporting from PixInsight, to lower the Blacks level, and Dehaze helped to further darken the background. There are most likely better ways to achieve this though - either in PixInsight, or collecting more data, I guess.

- I used 1.25" Astronomik filters, which introduced vignetting, but the flats helped to mostly resolve that, although there's still a blue gradient pattern in the four corners I need to figure out how to fix.

- The background is quite "scratchy" and not smooth. Not too sure what causes this. I am using dithering for the first time, maybe that could be the issue?

If you have any comments / tips, please let me know!

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3251336
PixInsight job	BW8TIL2OZWGRAMGAKDPIMUV5MVV3B9C0
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	20h48m13s.72
RA (top/left)	20h42m04s.78
RA (top/right)	20h45m50s.92
RA (bottom/right)	20h54m15s.92
RA (bottom/left)	20h50m41s.67

Dec (center)	+30°55′23″.7
Dec (top/left)	+31°49′30″.3
Dec (top/right)	+29°25′04″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	+30°00′17″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	+32°25′42″.2

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