NGC 6960, Witch's Broom or Western Loop of Veil Nebula, UHC-S, 16 Aug 2013 (David Dearden)

NGC 6960, Witch's Broom or Western Loop of Veil Nebula, UHC-S, 16 Aug 2013

52 Cyg is visible from my location even with a waxing gibbous Moon 60° or so away, so the Western Veil is easy to find with the Telrad. It is quite warm tonight and also a bit breezy. Chiller at 2.25 V, 12 °C on the CCD sensor. I have the CG5 east-weighted about 1/2" below the balance point, and so far my guiding performance looks quite good. I'd go to longer exposures but the sky glow would beat me if I did, so I'll just hope to get enough subs to make the Western Veil show up well. Some not-in-the-forecast clouds turned up and kind of ruined things, so I'm finishing the night taking some much needed new darks. The image turned out better than expected, given the paucity of data.

In the revision, I stretched the data a bit more.

Date: 16 Aug 2013

Subject: NGC 6960, Witch’s Broom or Western Loop of the Veil Nebula

Scope: Orion ST80 + Antares 0.5x focal reducer (on 1” nosepiece, so ~0.65x)

Filter: Baader UHC-S

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.2

Camera: DSI IIc (chiller at 2.25 A, T = 8-10 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.7, no dither

Exposure: 17x300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.244 Crop; Wipe:Color & Brightness; Develop 78.49%; Contrast; HDR:Equalize; Sharpen; Deconvolute: 2.5 pix; Color:True Color, Dark Sat 2.9, Bright Sat Full, Sat 181%; Life:Isolate; Track; Magic:Shrink 1. CS6+Astronomy Tools Increase star color; Make stars smaller; AstroFrame.

Original
Final
B

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7349688
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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