AndrewSingleton
The Western Veil (NGC 6960)
The Western Veil (NGC 6960) aka The Witch's Broom, Finger of God, Lacework Nebula or Filamentary Nebula. This is part of the Cygnus Loop which is a supernova remnant. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun, and it exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. The remnants have since expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, and 36 times the area, of the full Moon). While previous distance estimates have ranged from 1200 to 5800 light-years, a recent determination of 2400 light-years is based on direct astrometric measurements. The Veil Nebula is expanding at a velocity of about 1.5 million kilometers per hour. (Wikipedia)
57 180s lights (2 hours and 50 minutes) with flats and bias. Dithered.
Telescope: - Skywatcher 130PDS Newtonian.
Camera: - Nikon D3100 with a GuDoQi Wireless Wifi SD Card.
ISO: 400. Automated white balance
Filters: - Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector. IDAS D2 Light Pollution Suppression Filter
Flats taken with a Huion L4S Light Box and a white t-shirt.
Wireless Remote: PIXEL TW-283 DC2 2.4G. (Used for flats and bias)
Mount: - Skywatcher EQ6R.
Guiding: Skywatcher EvoGuide 50ED & ZWO ASI120MM-Mini.
Polar Aligned with SharpCap Pro.
Control Software: - NINA connecting to EQMOD, PHD Guiding 2, Stellarium and Plate Solve 2. EZ Share to automatically push pictures to the laptop.
Processing Software: Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and edited in Star Tools.
Moon: About 80% waxing gibbous.
Light Pollution and Location: - Bortle 8 in Davyhulme, Manchester.
Seeing: -Starting out terrible but possibly OK by the end of the night.
Notes: Its been a massive learning curve but I have finally got NINA astrophotography to work controlling pretty much everything. I am extremely impressed with this software. Furthermore my trusty old D3100 shutter was controlled by the software through the mount and using the file camera it was able to pick up the pictures just like connecting more expensive Nikons or Cannons to APT(or several other apps that I looked into but came to dead end with the D3100). I was able to bring up the schedule, load the Western Veil which was currently focused on in Stellarium, set the amount of subs I wanted, turn on dithering, then NINA just did its thing by attempting to find the object then correcting itself through plate solving. It even did a meridian flip and recentred the object afterwards. Watching it do its thing was a thing of beauty and is miles away from my original attempts at astrophotography using a AZ goto mount and a star chart.
Being completely up front, like everything in astrophotography you must take several steps backwards before taking a step forward. I have dabbled with NINA for a while but struggled to get to grips with it. I tried taking this same object a few weeks ago but did not have a good session. For some reason, the plate solving was not accurate enough and the object was only half was in frame. This is either because I hadn’t loaded my coordinates in PS2 or the file camera was picking the last picture instead of the current one. Looking back 52 Cygni is very bright star front and centre and it should have been obvious to me that something was not right.
Incidentally that same night, about 4-5 subs in my pictures suffered from dew, pretty much writing them off. I have since bought a cheap camping mat and Velcro to make a home-made dew shield. Handily the camping mat camp with a perfectly sized bit of elastic; I have cut up some cheap cycling shorts and used the elastic to block out any light from the bottom of the telescope. I am hoping this will also help with the dew. I have also made a dew shield for the guider.
I took a gamble on this picture as the weather forecast had me believe that it was going to be cloudy all night. Up until this session it had been predicting a clear night all week and it looked relatively clear when I looked out of the window before setting up. It then cloudy over but only for about an hour and a half which gave me time to make sure everything was set up properly. It then became clear, although seeing was bad, but this did improve over the course of the night. Thankfully, my gamble paid off and is point back in the battle between me and the weather, I have been done so many times with the forecast predicting clear skies but them not materialising.
I add this comment to the end of every one of my pictures but the amount of green being picked up in the Star Tools colour module is insane. I think the D3100 bayer filter is 2 green to every red and blue, it seems like its 10 greens to every red and blue. I hope the colour in this is OK however I had to bump the green bias correction right up and max out the cap green slider. I am slowly but surely saving up for a proper cooled camera which am sure will again take me several steps back before bringing me forward!
The Western Veil (NGC 6960)
The Western Veil (NGC 6960) aka The Witch's Broom, Finger of God, Lacework Nebula or Filamentary Nebula. This is part of the Cygnus Loop which is a supernova remnant. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun, and it exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. The remnants have since expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, and 36 times the area, of the full Moon). While previous distance estimates have ranged from 1200 to 5800 light-years, a recent determination of 2400 light-years is based on direct astrometric measurements. The Veil Nebula is expanding at a velocity of about 1.5 million kilometers per hour. (Wikipedia)
57 180s lights (2 hours and 50 minutes) with flats and bias. Dithered.
Telescope: - Skywatcher 130PDS Newtonian.
Camera: - Nikon D3100 with a GuDoQi Wireless Wifi SD Card.
ISO: 400. Automated white balance
Filters: - Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector. IDAS D2 Light Pollution Suppression Filter
Flats taken with a Huion L4S Light Box and a white t-shirt.
Wireless Remote: PIXEL TW-283 DC2 2.4G. (Used for flats and bias)
Mount: - Skywatcher EQ6R.
Guiding: Skywatcher EvoGuide 50ED & ZWO ASI120MM-Mini.
Polar Aligned with SharpCap Pro.
Control Software: - NINA connecting to EQMOD, PHD Guiding 2, Stellarium and Plate Solve 2. EZ Share to automatically push pictures to the laptop.
Processing Software: Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and edited in Star Tools.
Moon: About 80% waxing gibbous.
Light Pollution and Location: - Bortle 8 in Davyhulme, Manchester.
Seeing: -Starting out terrible but possibly OK by the end of the night.
Notes: Its been a massive learning curve but I have finally got NINA astrophotography to work controlling pretty much everything. I am extremely impressed with this software. Furthermore my trusty old D3100 shutter was controlled by the software through the mount and using the file camera it was able to pick up the pictures just like connecting more expensive Nikons or Cannons to APT(or several other apps that I looked into but came to dead end with the D3100). I was able to bring up the schedule, load the Western Veil which was currently focused on in Stellarium, set the amount of subs I wanted, turn on dithering, then NINA just did its thing by attempting to find the object then correcting itself through plate solving. It even did a meridian flip and recentred the object afterwards. Watching it do its thing was a thing of beauty and is miles away from my original attempts at astrophotography using a AZ goto mount and a star chart.
Being completely up front, like everything in astrophotography you must take several steps backwards before taking a step forward. I have dabbled with NINA for a while but struggled to get to grips with it. I tried taking this same object a few weeks ago but did not have a good session. For some reason, the plate solving was not accurate enough and the object was only half was in frame. This is either because I hadn’t loaded my coordinates in PS2 or the file camera was picking the last picture instead of the current one. Looking back 52 Cygni is very bright star front and centre and it should have been obvious to me that something was not right.
Incidentally that same night, about 4-5 subs in my pictures suffered from dew, pretty much writing them off. I have since bought a cheap camping mat and Velcro to make a home-made dew shield. Handily the camping mat camp with a perfectly sized bit of elastic; I have cut up some cheap cycling shorts and used the elastic to block out any light from the bottom of the telescope. I am hoping this will also help with the dew. I have also made a dew shield for the guider.
I took a gamble on this picture as the weather forecast had me believe that it was going to be cloudy all night. Up until this session it had been predicting a clear night all week and it looked relatively clear when I looked out of the window before setting up. It then cloudy over but only for about an hour and a half which gave me time to make sure everything was set up properly. It then became clear, although seeing was bad, but this did improve over the course of the night. Thankfully, my gamble paid off and is point back in the battle between me and the weather, I have been done so many times with the forecast predicting clear skies but them not materialising.
I add this comment to the end of every one of my pictures but the amount of green being picked up in the Star Tools colour module is insane. I think the D3100 bayer filter is 2 green to every red and blue, it seems like its 10 greens to every red and blue. I hope the colour in this is OK however I had to bump the green bias correction right up and max out the cap green slider. I am slowly but surely saving up for a proper cooled camera which am sure will again take me several steps back before bringing me forward!