NGC_6960 Witches Broom in Veil Nebula

[Daniel]

Hi all, here's a witches broom (seems popular right now) that I did a couple of nights ago, im actually quite happy with this one, although I seem to have captured Gazillion's of stars and even though im happy they're there, they slightly take away from the nebulosity, im also kicking myself I didn't get the same nice framing Chris got on his

This consists of 8x340s subs at ISO 400 CLS Filter, darks and flats applied. Taken with a Canon 40D on a Skywatcher 120ED and Guided on an 80ED with a DSI (I Know you guy's love your facts and figures when looking at an image)

I also managed to get some Ha and OIII Data which i hope to combine into this image (I originally shot this intending it to be used as a Luminance channel, but the skies were pretty good that night so had a go at processing just the colour)

The OIII is looking pretty good and definetly boosts the contrast when I combine it (I had a quick play earlier) but the Ha I took seems very noisy, not sure why, does anyone know why this may be noisier than the OIII (conditions were the same)

I know in compositing the blue channel is normally the troublesome one which has more noise in it so if anything I expected to get more noise on the OIII

Anyway, Once I process the Ha and OIII i'll hopefully update this image.





Edit :- Something was bugging me about the image, mainly that there were so many stars and they were all mostly white, making me think somewhere along the line I'd clipped the white values, here is a new version with less agressive processing (the stars got clipped in the sharpening process) tell us what you guy's prefer. Also while i had the chance I also incorporated some more subs into the image that i took last the day before, they weren't quite as good and suffered from dust which the flats didn't get rid of, so i've cropped the image to get rid of them a little.

[Rocket Pooch]

Very very good for a DSLR, I'm well impressed.

Chris

[RobertM]

Daniel, That's a stunning shot that most imagers would be thrilled with from an uncooled camera let alone a DSLR.  There's masses of red nebulosity showing though different parts are a bit muted in the both frames.  Would be better if you could draw out the best from both.

Also looks like skywatcher have produced yet another excellent scope in the 120ED.

[Daniel]

Thanks guy's, yes I might try keeping a little bit more of the background when I process the Ha and OIII images, hopefully having those on seperate channels will mean I can retain more contrast while under processing the rest of the image underneath

[RobertM]

Sorry I meant cooled rather than uncooled ...

[Daniel]

Just adjusted this image, took out some of the background red and sharpened the image, as per some suggestions on the UKAI board, tell us what you think.

[MarkS]

Daniel,

It's interesting to compare this with my Veil taken with the modified EOS 350D. 

http://forum.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/index.php?topic=3575.0

I shot twice as much data but at F6.3   What F-ratio is your setup?  Yours seems to have more nebulosity.

Mark

[Daniel]

Hi Mark, this shot was taken at F6.5, although i think this was a pretty clear night too which helped, except for the near full moon which was up on that day

EDIT - Actually, just remembered, the 80 is F6.5, this image was taken on the 120 at F7.5

[Fay]

I think a lot of it is personal taste. I have had a look at Mark's & Chris's & do prefer an image which has a softer light & not so many stars. You have lots of nice nebulosity bought out in the last image.
There is a lot of difference in the outcome between the different scope, camera setups.

As I say, it is personal taste.

Fay

[Daniel]

Yes, I definitely agree with you about the softness and aspecially the number of stars, not sure why there are so many, I've kept the processing with curves to a minimum so I didn't blow out the stars, but there still very bright and there are tons, quite distracting from the nebulosity.