NGC 6995 / Eastern Veil NebulaAnother revisit to a target I've imaged previously. Back in May 2022 I used NGC 6995 to test some new equipment, that
image was a single night capture totaling around 3 hours of total integration, and while I was happy at the time, with hindsight I felt like I didn't really do the target justice - thus the revisit. This time around I decided to do a 2x1 mosaic covering the whole object.
Other changes from my previous attempt include; an extra years worth of processing experience, use of the various Russell Croman magic tools, a significant increase in integration time and the inclusion of RGB stars. The overall colour mapping for this image was achieved using SPCC in Narrowband mode (R=H, G=O, B=O) with a bit of SCNR to get a tone I liked for the Oiii.
A couple of challenges..... first of all the absolutely terrible weather... this image represents pretty much every meaningfully clear night I've had since early June when I uploaded my image of the
Tulip Nebula! Secondary the data quality, I ended up having to crush down the blacks a bit more than I would have liked (which would be not at all) due to some very uneven background gradients I simply couldn't shift without doing worse harm to the object itself. I think the uneven background is a compound of a few issues, such as: uneven SNR between mosaic panels, artifacts from the mosaic process itself, the tight framing on the object and a general lack of quality data to begin with. On the last point, I probably used some data that, with hindsight, I really shouldn't have (clouds / poor seeing / no astro dark) due to the aforementioned terrible weather!
In the end however I'm relatively happy with the result, especially when compared to my previous outing on the target. It's just a shame about the loss of some of the fainter detail.
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