Cygnus Loop -- Veil Nebula
This remnant of a stellar explosion is invisible to the naked eye, but is now a familiar and easy target for backyard astrophotography.
Tech Stuff: Borg55FL Astrograph/IDAS LPS-V4 filter/ZWO ASI1600 MC/iOptron CubePro mount. 4.4 hours of 4 second exposures captured in SharpCap LiveStacks; processed in PixInsight and ACDSee. From my yard 10 miles north of NYC, SQM-L = 18.9.
Compare with this version from two years ago, using a more classic Narrowband filter/Mono Camera technique
www.flickr.com/photos/124244349@N07/48822600536/in/datepo... I would say the NB version has better blue/O3 detail while the OSC (one shot color) camera version has more depth in the red/HA regions. The color version, with my current processing scheme, delivers more color in the rich starfield, and both capture and processing are streamlined by comparison. Both were captured unguided using a very portable mount. One nice feature of imaging with the 200mm focal length Borg is that I can use PHD to do a precise drift alignment. This enables the modest CubePro to easily acquire the targets and track accurately for hours -- I did not need to reposition once during over 4 hours of capture.
Cygnus Loop -- Veil Nebula
This remnant of a stellar explosion is invisible to the naked eye, but is now a familiar and easy target for backyard astrophotography.
Tech Stuff: Borg55FL Astrograph/IDAS LPS-V4 filter/ZWO ASI1600 MC/iOptron CubePro mount. 4.4 hours of 4 second exposures captured in SharpCap LiveStacks; processed in PixInsight and ACDSee. From my yard 10 miles north of NYC, SQM-L = 18.9.
Compare with this version from two years ago, using a more classic Narrowband filter/Mono Camera technique
www.flickr.com/photos/124244349@N07/48822600536/in/datepo... I would say the NB version has better blue/O3 detail while the OSC (one shot color) camera version has more depth in the red/HA regions. The color version, with my current processing scheme, delivers more color in the rich starfield, and both capture and processing are streamlined by comparison. Both were captured unguided using a very portable mount. One nice feature of imaging with the 200mm focal length Borg is that I can use PHD to do a precise drift alignment. This enables the modest CubePro to easily acquire the targets and track accurately for hours -- I did not need to reposition once during over 4 hours of capture.