Tag: pickering's triangle

Western Veil Nebula & Pickering’s Triangle

The Cygnus Loop is a large supernova remnant within the constellation Cygnus which is now visible in the night sky in the Northern Hemisphere. The entire structure is around 3 degrees in size and sits around 2,400 light years away. It has an age of around 21,000 years. This target, for me, was one of the more frustrating targets. Its unique coloring, its “whispiness” and the sheer amount of stars make it a challenging target to both shoot and more importantly, process cleanly. In total, for the Western Veil images, I got around 5 hours of data total and I feel like to get it completely “clean” I would need around 15 more total hours for a total of 20 hours on target. I am hoping to get this amount in a more wide field, which I have already begun and is shown in the images at the end of this post.

These images where processed as an HOO image. This means three channels, one in Ha, and two in Oiii. This was down with a one shot color camera utilizing a dual narrowband filter – the Optolong L-eNhanced. The channels were separated in Astro Pixel Processor then recombined and then processed in Photoshop. I really like how the stars here have decent color, which is typically difficult to achieve when processing normally when using a narrowband filter.
These images have a more “traditional” processing method – stacking in Deep Sky Stacker then processing in Photoshop.

As you can see in both sets, there are a large amount of stars, even with star reduction techniques being used. The inverted images really show the star field and the deep contrast of the nebulosity.

Image & Equipment Information:

Meade Series 6000 80mm Triplet APO Refractor
Canon EOS Ra
Optolong L-eNhanced Filter
Ho-Tech Field Flattener
ZWO 30mm f4 MiniScope (guide)
ZWO asi120mm (guide)
Pegasus Powerbox Advanced

15 x 360s (6/16/2021)
30 x 420s (6/17/2021)
Dark, flat, bias and dark flat frames for calibration
ISO 800 – Taken in Providence, RI – Bortle 8

These images show the entirety of the Cygnus Loop. The annotated version is provided by astrobin.com. These were taken with a similar setup as the Western Veil images, but with the Radian Raptor 61 instead of the Meade 80mm. Here you can see the Western Veil at the top of the image with the Eastern Veil nebula at the bottom. Though I was planning on putting a lot of focus on the North American Nebula, I think I am going to put some time in on Eastern Veil with the Meade and the Loop as a whole with the Raptor. This image needs a lot more data as I only have just over an hour and a half so far.

Image & Equipment Information:

Radian Raptor 61
Canon EOS Ra
Optolong L-eNhanced Filter
ZWO 30mm f4 MiniScope (guide)
ZWO asi224mc (guide)
Pegasus Powerbox Advanced

20 x 300s (6/13/2021)
Dark, flat, bias and dark flat frames for calibration
ISO 800 – Taken in Providence, RI – Bortle 8

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