After having imaged the
Western Veil Nebula in 2022, I wanted to return and add time & RGB stars to the area in 2023 before I switched to the ASI533MC Pro with its smaller sensor. The Eastern Veil, however, proved too tempting to pass up, so I added HaOIII and RGB stars for that area as well.
For some reason, the Eastern Veil portion turned out much better than the older Western Veil data, despite being a fraction of the integration time (just shy of 4 hours, to the 9+ hours on the Western portion). The background was correspondingly noisier in the Eastern Portion but the nebulosity was much more detailed and brighter. I do recall having issues with exposure times on the Western Veil (and it was in the hot summer with 8+ minute exposures) so perhaps it was just poor data.
The most challenging part of processing was matching the colour balance between the Eastern and Western portions of the veil. The Eastern had much better OIII signal, and the areas where OIII and Ha overlapped produced some beautiful orange tones which weren't present in the Western portion. Luckily Bill Blanshan's narrowband normalization plugin helped strengthen the signal in the Western portion, and I toned down some of the brighter areas in the Eastern portion to match.
I can't wait to return to this area with my cooled camera and do a 4-panel mosaic! CS and thanks for checking out my image.
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