Eastern Veil Nebula - Prime Focus Pictures
 Images Copyright © 2006, 2011, 2021 by Dick Locke.  All Rights Reserved.  Contact and Image Use Information 

Western Veil Page
Cygnus Area Image Index (Pictures of Objects in the Cygnus Area)

Eastern Veil Nebula from 2020

Object Information: Eastern Veil Nebula - 11 hours total exposure from the back yard.
NGC 6992in Cygnus, the eastern part of the Veil Nebula, AKA Caldwell 33. The veil was formed from a supernova over 5,000 years ago and is about 2400 light-years away. Note the distances and sizes of objects like this are often not well known.
 

Image Capture Details: 11 hours total imaging time (54 * 5 min Ha plus 79 * 5 min O3 frames) collected over the last several weeks with MaximDL in the back yard. SBIG ST-8300 CCD camera with the FW8-8300 filter wheel, Astrodon narrowband 36mm filters, the Takahashi FSQ-85 telescope at native 450mm, AP 900GTO mount. Guiding via PHD, an ZWO ASI290MM Mini CMOS Telescope Guide Camera, and a Sky-Watcher EVOGUIDE 50ED guide scope mounted to the finder bracket. (This replaces my old, perhaps antique, STV, ST80, and heavy side-saddle guiding setup previously used). Location is my back yard near The Woodlands, TX.

Image Processing Details: Lights were calibrated with 58 darks, 64 each flats, 32 each flat darks, and 128 bias frames and each channel was stacked in DSS producing a 32 bit .tif file. I then processed the file in Photoshop, converting to 16 bit RGB, and combined the images in Registax padding them to equal size. I then did the channel manipulation and final processing steps in Photoshop, with the trickiest step adding a gradient to offset light pollution in the original

Eastern Veil Nebula - Narrowband Picture

This image consists of 24*5 minute frames of O3 data in the Blue/Green channels, combined with 21*5 minutes of H-alpha in the Red channel for a total of 3.75 hours.

The Veil Nebula complex is in Cygnus, amid the rich background of the winter milky way.   The Veil is a supernova remnant from 5-10,000 years  ago, and is around 1500 light years from earth.  Note the narrowband image, and improved processing, have resulted in much less noticeable stars compared with my previous effort -- a good thing.

Equipment: SBIG ST-8300 CCD camera with the FW8-8300 filter wheel, Astrodon narrowband 36mm filters, the Takahashi FSQ-85 telescope with reducer,  AP 900GTO mount.  I used MaximDL to acquire and process flat and dark frames, Registar to align, Photoshop CS5 with a little HDR toning to process from there.  Other narrowband pictures with this combination, and more info, are at this link.  Other astronomy pictures from the Fall 2011 trip are here.

Eastern Veil Nebula  (close crop)

The Veil Nebula complex is in Cygnus, amid the rich background of the winter milky way.   The Veil is a supernova remnant from 5-10,000 years  ago, and is around 1500 light years from earth.  This picture above is a crop of the larger version, below, and is reduce to about 80% of the camera's raw output.  Registar counts over 15,000 stars in the original frame of this image.  

This is my first-ever attempt at the veil area.  It is quite dim and therefore especially difficult to image.  I've only seen it once visually, though a NHAC member's big scope with a special filter.

Image details. 30 x 4 = 120 minutes total exposures from the morning of 9/21/2006 at the HAS site near Columbus.  Canon EOS 20Da (unmodified), Takahashi TOA 130 (a 5" APO refractor), Losmandy G-11 mount.    My current image processing workflow is here.