20210527 - Finally Clear Skies after days of rain and clouds, so ... scope out ... ready, set, action .... ✨🔭🤩

What was the experience

I’ve been “learning” for 2 1/2 months so far on galaxies/moon, but wanted to focus on a Nebula for a change. I had done the “Ring” nebula, but that’s a bit small for the RedCat/ASI462 combination, “North America” is too big (no pun intended 😂), so I settled for the Veil Nebula in Cygnus. Wanted to try and capture the soft color palette of this Nebula. Integration time is a bit short, but it was already late at night after other objects in te observing plan, “full” moon was popping up, and a faint “veil” of clouds 🙄 was starting to appear (they must’ve misunderstood what type of veil I wanted to capture)

What’s in the picture(s)

NGC6992 - Eastern part of the Veil Nebula - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_Nebula - Quote: “The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus.

It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant, many portions of which have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun which exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. At the time of explosion, the supernova would have appeared brighter than Venus in the sky, and visible in daytime”

How it was done

Mount: iOptron SkyGuider Pro

Guiding: ASIAIR Pro, ZWO30F4, ASI120MM (RA guiding only)

Scope: WO RedCat 51

Camera: ASI462MC

Filter: Astronomik UV/IR L1

Moon 96%(-), Bortle 5/6

Processing: Siril, Adobe Photoshop (Mac)

NGC6992 - Gain125 180s 30x

Darks 10x

What have I learned from this

I’m noticing the limits of the RedCat/ASI462 combination wrt resolution (2.38”/pixel). Done a bit of research for a new camera, balancing pixel-size, sensor-size, resolution versus Qe, amp glow, etc ... Made a choice between “sharpness” and FoV that would be a better fit for DSO for a scope with short focal range (ASI462 will be used for planetary/lunar when a bigger scope 🔭 comes along ... eventually 🤞)

Ready for the next learning step in the processing

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

#astrophotography #astrophoto #astrophotos

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#astrography #astrography_ #backyard

#deepsky #nightsky

#NGC6992 #VeilNebula

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