Veil Nebula Mosaic from Spruce Knob, WV

There are so many great things about astrophotography, one of which is the never ending learning curve when it comes to processing image data. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to process the 3 panel mosaic I captured over two nights at Spruce Knob summit. It had been a long time since I did 3 panels and I was learning a new processing program as well. So, I dove in and things came together much quicker than I expected. I am really finalizing my workflow from Pixinsight to Photoshop and may someday make a small presentation on that. But, in the meantime, this is one of my favorite areas of the sky.

The Veil Nebula Supernova remnant is also known as the Cygnus loop. Link to Wikipedia. To think this is the expanding remnant from a star 20 times bigger than our sun and happened over 8,000 years ago is stunning.

The complex covers a little wider part of the sky than this composition, but this was the best I could cover in two pristine nights on Spruce with my current gear.

For a complete technical list for this image, please see my astrobin page.

I hope you enjoy the image and can marvel at what it represents. Have a great day.

Click on image for larger presentation.

New Images from Spruce Knob and a Revisit

Hello friends and imagers.

My new image processing workflow is starting to yield results. I have processed and published much of the work captured from the summit of Spruce Knob in September. I still have some mosaic work to be done and many more sets of data to work up.

But for now, here are the images from Spruce Knob. You can click on each image for a larger presentation.

These are old standards of the night sky, but I wanted to capture data with the new equipment. The AP Stowaway and ZWO ASI 294 MC Pro did the lions share of the work. I did add some halpha data to the Andromeda Galaxy that was acquired right from my backyard.

The Great Andromeda Galaxy. Spruce Knob RGB data supplemented with Halpha from home.

Approximately 3 hours of data acquired from the summit of Spruce Knob for M45 The Pleiades Star Cluster.

M16 or Eagle Nebula is hard for me to access. It is behind the hill at my house, so I always have to travel to image this area. I did not get as much data as I wanted on this object as clouds rolled in. I hope to revisit in 2020.

I revisited some DSLR data taken a couple of years ago on the Astro-Physics 130 Gran Turismo with some recently acquired Halpha data on the Astro-Physics Stowaway.

Ultimate Portable Astrophotography Setup Part 2

We expand our search for the Ultimage Portable Photography Setup. Equipment reviewed is the William Optics Redcat 51 on the iOptron Skyguider Pro with multiple ZWO gear including the Air, 294 MC Pro camera, and 120 camera and scope. Please give it a view.

Badwater Milky Way

The setting Milky Way from the lowest point in North America. The night sky is remarkable at Badwater. The salt residue patterns adding a point of focus in the foreground. The town of Ridgecrest casts some light on the horizon, but that is the only light visible this location. Sitting in the middle of Badwater at night, taking in the beauty of the sky and hearing absolutely no sounds, created a tranquil environment for meditation and reflection. The Sony A7RIII was used with the Laowa 15mm f2 lens with 10 images of 10 seconds stacked to form a smooth Milky Way presentation.

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