Tag: NGC6960

Cygnus

I went to Crete without a detailed plan on which deep space objects to capture. The primary target was Rho Ophiuchi, which I captured really well. Then I started to think about the next objects. Obviously, if you are in a dark place, you can point your camera nearly anywhere. However, there are some regions full of stars and deep space objects. For example constellation Cygnus, which is sometimes called the Northern Cross. It is located visually on the plane of the Milky Way galactic disk, therefore there are many deep space objects.

Let’s have a look at a wide-field picture captured by a 24 mm lens attached to Canon EOS 6Da:

Let’s zoom a bit by changing the lens to a 50 mm focal length. Here the constellation is perfectly centered:

Let’s zoom further to the central star Sadr by change of the lens to 180 mm focal length:

Let’s keep the focal length 180 mm and let’s have a look at the left star Deneb and very famous North America nebula:

Again, let’s keep the focal length 180 mm and change to perspective to the bottom (eastern) star Aljanah, where the beautiful supernova remnant the Veil nebula is located:

In total, the camera collected 15.5 hours of light and I am happy with the result.


NGC6960 NGC6992 Veil nebula mosaic

Here is another picture of my favorite Veil nebula. The first attempt here with a long focal length (1000 mm), the second attempt here with a shorter focal length (730 mm), and finally third here with the shortest focal length I have (430 mm). Still, I haven’t captured everything of the nebula last year and this year I focused my smallest telescope on the western part of the Veil nebula and created a mosaic.

The picture, as well as the previous ones, are bi-color images. I captured hydrogen alpha (Ha) and oxygen III (OIII) narrow band images and inserted the Ha image into the red channel and OIII into the green and blue channels.

Telescope:Newton 150/600 mm
Aperture:150 mm
Focal length:438 mm
Mount:Gemini G53f
Autoguiding:ZWO 174MM, TS 60/240 mm
Camera:Moravian instruments G2 8300M @ -30C
Corrector:ASA 2″ reducer 0.73
Filters:Baader Ha 7 nm, OIII 8.5 nm SII 8nm
Exposure:30x Ha, 30x OIII, 600 s, bin 1×1
Date:2016-09-01

NGC6960 Veil nebula

For the third time I am trying to capture the whole Veil nebula, but again, there is a part missing. This time I used the smallest telescope, I have at home – newton 150/600, reduced to focal length 438 mm, by ASA 0.73 reducer. This picture contains the first picture in the left top corner and the second picture in the right bottom corner. Anyway, there is still something missing, therefore next time I have to reduce the focal length even more or do a mosaic.

Telescope:Newton 150/600 mm
Aperture:150 mm
Focal length:438 mm
MountGemini G53f
AutoguidingZWO 174MM, TS 60/240 mm
Camera:Moravian instruments G2 8300M @-30C
Corrector:ASA 2″ reducer 0.73
Filters:Baader Ha 7 nm, OIII 8.5 nm SII 8nm
Exposure:9xHa, 9xOIII, 600 s, bin 1×1
Date:2015-11-09

NGC6960 Veil nebula

The previous picture of the Veil nebula was done by using a focal length of 1000 mm. Since this nebula is huge, I wanted to capture also the other parts. This time I reduced the focal length to 730 mm, by ASA corrector/reducer.

Telescope:Newton 254/1000 mm
Aperture:254 mm
Focal length:730 mm
MountSkywatcher EQ-6
AutoguidingOrion Mini Autoguider
Camera:Moravian instruments G2 8300M @ -30C
Corrector:ASA 2″ corrector/reducer
Filters:Baader Ha, OIII
Exposure:15x Ha, 15x OIII, 600 s, bin 1×1

NGC6960 Veil nebula

Veil nebula is a supernova remnant – hot and ionized gas and dust floating in the universe, as a remainder of a mighty star, which once shined (roughly before 5 – 8 thousand of years), locate in constellation Cygnus (swan). This nebula is relatively close to Earth – only 1470 light years, therefore the visual angle is huge – approximately 3 degrees, which is six times the diameter of the Moon.

The picture is composed by bi-color technique. Two narrow band pictures were taken (Ha and OIII). H alpha was used for red channel and OIII for green and blue. Since I used quite long focal length (1000 mm) the whole DSO didn’t fit in the field of view of the camera. Next time I will try to use shorter one.

NGC6960_Veil_2015-08-23-30C-600s-7HaOIII-FL1000