NGC6960 The Western Veil Nebula

NGC6960. The Veil Nebula: Commonly named the Veil nebula, the Cirrus nebula or the Witches Broom nebula. It lies in the constellation of Cygnus the swan shining at a low surface brightness of magnitude 7 at a distance of 1,500 light years. It was discovered back in 1784 by William Herschel.  I took this image under heavy light pollution and a first quarter moon, the sky conditions was very clear however stars was only visable down to magnitude 4.5. I was using my ten inch F4.8 reflector.with an Atlux mount, an Atik 383L mono CCD camera and P.H.D. auto guiding. The exposure time was one hour for each narrowband filter, [ HA . O111 and S11 ] and forty minutes for each R.G.B. filter. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image.

RGB

Bi Colour

Narrowband

Narrowband Unsharp Masked

M27

M27. The Dumbell Nebula.  This image of M27 is a composition of new and old data taken on three seperate evenings . I used five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combinded them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image . I used H Alpha as red, O111 as blue and S11 for the green , the total exposure times was 3 hours using a HA filter , 2 hours using an O111 filter , one and a half hours using a S11 filter and 30 minutes for ​​each R.G.B. filter. A total exposure time of 8 hours.

RGB

Narrowband

Erode

Here we have the final composition of M27 the Dumbell nebula, notice the faint outer shells of gas expanding outwards. I used all of the narrowband data for the luminance and only a little RGB colour data to reveal the colour of the stars. The total exosure time was 8 hours taken over three seperate evenings.