The Veil nebula is something I’ve been meaning to take an image of since I got my QHY9 camera and last night was the first opportunity I’ve had. The skies are getting dark again after the summer twilight, there was no moon and conditions were pretty much as perfect as they’re going to get in the UK.
Using the Canon 75-300mm lens at a focal length of 100mm I took 20 5 minute exposures followed by 30 2 second flat fields. This lens is badly afflicted by vignetting and the flats compensate nicely. With Cygnus high in the sky and little moisture to reflect the ever present light pollution gradients weren’t a problem for this wide field.
The nebula doesn’t stand out particularly well against the backdrop of Milky Way stars in this image. To improve visibility, I’ve cropped the image fairly tight to the nebula as otherwise it’s rather lost amongst the stars.
Edit: Image replaced with reprocessed one.
One reply on “Veil Nebula”
[…] A near full moon restricted me to relatively bright targets on the other side of the sky and the Veil nebula met the requirements. Focal length was increased to 200mm and 12 five minute sub-frames were acquired. Despite the less than ideal conditions the result is a huge improvement on my earlier attempt here: http://littlebeck.org.uk/?p=673 […]