Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 6960  ·  The star 52 Cyg  ·  Veil Nebula
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Western Veil Nebula, NGC6960, 'Witch's Broom' in HOO with RGB stars, Alastairmk
Western Veil Nebula, NGC6960, 'Witch's Broom' in HOO with RGB stars
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Western Veil Nebula, NGC6960, 'Witch's Broom' in HOO with RGB stars

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Western Veil Nebula, NGC6960, 'Witch's Broom' in HOO with RGB stars, Alastairmk
Western Veil Nebula, NGC6960, 'Witch's Broom' in HOO with RGB stars
Powered byPixInsight

Western Veil Nebula, NGC6960, 'Witch's Broom' in HOO with RGB stars

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Description

Have overlooked the Veil Nebula for years and was pleasantly surprised for my first HOO image with RGB stars.

Images acquired over 10 nights in August-September 2023, when summer conditions don't favour astroimaging, and I had to reject nearly 10 hours of lower quality data during processing.  Pixinsight's new processes --BlurX, NoiseX, StarX, GeneralizedHyperbolicStretch -- and scripts -- WBPP and NSG -- worked their usual magic to transform the result.  I processed this to bring out some of the Ha detail around the OIII filaments.  Total integration 66x8min Ha, 66x8min OIII for 17.6h ours and about an hour total of 60s RGB exposures to capture the stars.

I experimented using the narrowband option of SpectrophotometricColorCalibration to color the HOO stars, but decided that the RGB stars produced a slightly better result

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Western Veil Nebula, NGC6960, 'Witch's Broom' in HOO with RGB stars, Alastairmk

In these public groups

NOVAC
Light Polluted skies