Ad Astra Observatory

The Veil Nebula is a stark test of your optical system. There is a huge brightness range among the various pieces. The size of the object is pretty staggering, too. And there’s a ton of wispy detail that is easy to get lost in noise, blown-out highlights, etc.

I have been playing around with the Dust-n-Scratches + gradient removal method of editing for the last couple of images. I’m not sure I have it down yet, but I’m getting there.

There is a very strange and disturbing “tearing” effect that happens with my images. It has something to do with the dark frame application I think. It does not seem to matter whether I use bias frames or not (I do not scale my darks). I end up with a kind of blotchy background which detracts a little from the gorgeous deep sky object.

This is 18x20m subframes, a full 6 hours.
There is no catalog that lists all the pieces of the Veil as a single object, so this image contains NGC6992, 6960, and several others.

For extra wispyness, check out the image inverted!