Monmouth OR, July 28-29, 2022

This project was the second using the SV102T refractor with a 0.74x focal reducer, providing a 2.55-degree field width.  In lieu of the cancelled Oregon Star party, data were captured over two clear nights in Monmouth, Oregon using Hydrogen-alpha and Oxygen-III narrowband filters.  Almost all the subframes were used since they were of high quality, with exceptions for those taken too early or late when the sky was too bright.  Guiding was sufficient, but there was more variability than experienced previously, with the total error ranging between 0.6 and 0.75 arcsec.  Post processing with PixInsight was straight forward to create an HOO false color image.  The HOO image was created, and the luminance was extracted.  StarXTerminator was used to remove the stars using the new opscreen option.  Starless images were processed, and the luminance was combined with the HOO RGB color image to produce a sharpened nebula.  The stars were processed separately, and the color was calibrated with the PhotometricCalibration process tool.  I also tried the NoiseXTerminator tool from Russ Croman.  It worked brilliantly.

The Veil Nebula is the visible portion of the nearby Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant formed roughly 10,000 years ago by the death of a massive star (~20 solar masses).  The shockwaves and debris from the supernova created the Veil Nebula’s lacy structures of ionized gas.  The fast-moving blast wave from the ancient explosion is moving into a wall of cool, denser interstellar gas, emitting light. The nebula lies along the edge of a large bubble of low-density gas that was blown into space by the dying star prior to the supernova explosion.  The Veil Nebula lies around 2,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan (NASA).  The Veil is so large that only a portion fit in the camera’s field of view.  This is the Western Veil that includes the witch’s broom and Pickering’s triangle.

Imaging details:

Stellarvue SVX102T refractor with 0.74x focal reducer (FL = 528mm, f/5.2)
ZWO large off-axis guider with a ZWO ASI 174MM mini guide camera
Losmandy G11 mount with Gemini 2
ZWO ASI 2600MM Pro cooled monochrome camera (-10oC)
ZWO 36mm Hydrogen-alpha and Oxygen-III filters
Equatorial camera rotation: 90o

Software:    Sequence Generator Pro, ASTAP plate solving, PHD2 guiding, 
    Losmandy Gemini ASCOM mount control and web client interface,
    SharpCap Pro for polar alignment with the Polemaster camera,
    PixInsight 1.8.9 with StarXTerminator (AI version 10) and StarNet2,
    Photoshop CC 2022

Hydrogen-alpha    10 min x 32 subframes (320 min), Gain 100, Offset 68, 1x1 binning
Oxygen-III        10 min x 32 subframes (320 min), Gain 100, Offset 68, 1x1 binning