This project was my first using the SV102T refractor with new Chroma narrowband filters.  A 5nm Hydrogen-alpha and a 3nm Oxygen-III filter were used to capture the ionized gas emission light from the supernova remnant.  Almost all the subframes were used since they were of very high quality.  Guiding was variable depending on the seeing, with the total error ranging between 0.5 and 0.7 arcsec.  Post processing in PixInsight used a slightly different approach to create an HOO false color image.  Drizzle integration was used to extract fine details from the data.  The HOO image was created using the Multichannel Synthesis script with 100% Ha in the red, 80% Oiii in the Green, and 110% Oiii in the blue channel.  StarXTerminator was used to remove the stars in the linear state.  A luminance image was extracted from the HOO RGB color image.  The luminance was used to sharpen the details in the starless nebula.  Starless images were further 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 used the NoiseXTerminator tool from Russ Croman on linear and stretched images.

The new 3mm thick filters added 1mm to the back focus, which increased it from 55 to 56mm.  This caused distortion in the stars near two corners and edges with a pattern consistent with the back focus being too long.  I communicated with Vic Maris, the president of Stellarvue, and he confirmed the diagnosis and provided me with a solution.  There is a 10mm spacer on the back of the focal reducer that can be removed.  Then 9mm of spacers can be added to the M48 threads of the focal reducer adapter.  Kudos Vic!

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 Eastern Veil that contains beautiful filaments and some interesting faint Ha features.