Backyard Astrophotography with the Veil Nebula.

[@epdreher]

Definitely the final version, James. Fantastic image.

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Eric!

[@alanhancox7804]

Soooooo much detail!!!! Jaw dropping!!!

[@avt_astro206]

Great Image of Veil Nebula!! Very Good Details!👍👍👏

[@DSOImager]

Thanks!

[@moisefluckiger4681]

Hi James, Wonderful results. Congrats ! I am watching your videos again and again ! Cant wait for my 294mm...

[@DSOImager]

Thank you so much! The 294mm is proving to be an excellent camera. Good luck with yours! :)

[@ColeRees]

Subbed! I have the same set up as you but with the OSC camera. I am gonna be taking notes on your processing! Great stuff.

[@DSOImager]

Thanks! Appreciate it! :)

[@RussellsAstrophotography]

Fantastic image James. Great to see your editing workflow, I learnt a lot. Thanks 👍

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Russell! I've got a proper tutorial coming up on SHO processing of the Elephant trunk. Stay tuned!

[@hansanarandeepastrophotogr9876]

Amazing image, beautiful colouration and good details! 👏

[@DSOImager]

Thanks!

[@CosmuzzAstro]

I have atempted this object twice in the past, both were epic fails. Going to give it another go this year....3rd time lucky. Nice video, good to see how you put this together. Lovely colour and detail in the final image. Thanks James!

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Ben, appreciate the comments :) I have faith in you being able to pull it off on the 3rd attempt!

[@Jason-qt8bm]

Great channel and set of videos. I would appreciate a video on deconvolution. clear skies!

[@DSOImager]

Thanks! I actually covered deconvolution in my latest processing video.. posted it yesterday. May still do a video that focuses on deconvolution only.

[@chridignan9178]

Exquisite and breath-taking image! Congratulations. I too have the same scope and am intrigued to know your guiding set-up? Thanks for sharing.

[@DSOImager]

Thanks! I am using the zwo off axis guider with a zwo asi178mm as the guide camera. The asi178 is using bin 2. The mount is an eq6 r pro. Guiding software is phd2. I am using the latest version with multi star guiding. In good seeing conditions, the total RMS error will typically be in the .5"s-.6"s. With stable air Ive seen it as low as the high .3"s. Data is usable up to the .8"s. Wind is a big factor. I have the dew shield on mine. 7mph or greater winds is enough for me to shut it down.

[@derekbaker3279]

Hi James. I'm very late to the party & you may have sorted out the reflection issue, but just in case you have not, I will mention a few things. 1. Tracking down the source of these sorts of halos can be a long process, as there are many possible sources of reflection within the imaging set-up. Generally, the source of the problem has to do with the design of one of the components in your imaging set-up, or the manufacturing (e.g.quality of coatings on glass surfaces. It's much less likely that the source of the halo problem is just your particular copy of a component. 2. It is possible that the reflections that produced the halos in your Ha & OIII images occurred inside the field flattener/reducer IF the field flattener/reducer is made of more than one element, the elements are air-spaced & there aren't proper broadband coatings on every air-to-glass surface. 3. It is possible that the filters aren't fully broadband coated, so they reflected some of the incoming light from the bright star back up to the flattener/reducer, which then reflected the halo back down to the sensor. This is a rather common source of halos, especially when 'budget' filters are used. 4. It is possible that the optical window that seals the sensor chamber from the outside air is fully broadband coated, and the optical window reflected some of the incoming light from the bright star back up to either the filters or the flattener/reducer, which in-turn reflected the halo down to the sensor. This is also a rather common source of halos. 5. There is a thin sheet of glass or other material (often called the cover slip) that protects that sensor materials from air/moisture/etc, and in some cases, it may not be fully broadband coated. That means that it is possible that incoming light from the bright star reflected off the 'cover slip' back up to either the optical window, the filters, or the flattener/reducer, which then reflected the halo back down to the sensor. This used to be a significant problem, to the point that Finger Lakes Instruments (who makes the best CCD cameras for amateur & professional imaging set-ups) used to...and may still...offer an option in their cameras that included removing the cover slip from the sensor (note: this is not the same as removing the Red/IR filter that sits on top of regular camera sensors). 6. It is possible that more than one of these sources of reflections within the optical/imaging train are occurring at the same time. You will know if you look at an image & you see multiple halos of different diameters around the same bright star. From what I could see in your YT video, it does not appear to be the case, so - ideally - once you've isolated the source of the reflection, you will only need to make one change to eliminate the source of the most agregious halos. 7. Because you are dealing with so many possible sources of the halos, it may be best to ask around to find out if other astro-imagers started having the same problems when the began using either the same flattener/reducer, or the same filters, or the same CCD camera. This will save you time & money swapping out components until you discover which one was the problematic one. Apologies for the long-winded post James, but I hope this has been helpful. Best of luck with doing the 'detective work' to find the source of the problem!

[@DSOImager]

Hi Derek, no apologies needed. This is good info.. and not just for me. Maybe someone else running into a similar issue will see your comment. Most appreciated! I have not resolved the issue yet. On point 7, I did get some help from another imager. Joe from Joes astrophotography is running an identical setup to mine, with one exception.. he's using different fitlers. He framed up the same target with the same gain/exposure. With Ha, his astrodon filter did not have the halo... so at this point I am leaning towards my filters as part of the problem. Point 3 seems like the most plausible possibility. I plan to reach out to astronomik and see what they say. They have an article on their page that talks about a batch of filters getting out that didn't get a specific coating.

[@derekbaker3279]

@@DSOImager Cool. That's good of Astronomik to have that info available. Yes, filters are usually the culprit, with the optical window in the camera itself being next on the list. These days, only the less expensive flatteners/reducers/correctors may lack sufficient broadband coatings (however, manufacturing erros do happen, as Astronomik admits....) Of course, the more wide-field the imaging system is, the more likely there will be a pesky bright star in the field, and long exposures/highly sensitive cameras exacerbate the problem. FWIW, my experience with Bader filters was pretty good. I found that Generation II & later Astrodon filters were the definitely best. Whoever manufactures Astrodon filters nowadays really goes all out to coat their filters to deal with reflections from the near-UV to the IR. Of course, that makes them a lot more expensive, but the good news is that you usually get good value for Astrodon filters if you ever sell them.

[@lukomatico]

Hey there James! - You are getting really beautiful resolution from that setup, top notch stuff :-) I like the gentle use of deconvolution you did, so many times I've seen it really heavy-handedly applied and it can look a bit rough! Great job mate :) Clear skies!

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Luke! Appreciate the comment. I've been real happy with this setup so far.. except for that halo, lol. On processing, I like my images the same as my steaks.. medium rare with a nice crust :)

[@AZ4Runner]

I love these types of videos James. I would of stopped at the 1st autostretch.. The Final Triangle image was amazing!!! good suggestion to sit on it a day before the image is released.. Clear Skies!

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Jason. Really appreciate the comments!

[@OlliesSpace]

Enjoyed the walkthrough of the steps, I'm new to Pixinsight so great to see how you go about these steps. I really enjoyed both images although maybe I leaned to the one with more of a teal look. Was a great image overall with some fantastic detail. Hope you sort out the issue with the halos.

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Ollie! Really glad you liked it.

[@SharpStarAstro]

Love the video James, and image!

[@DSOImager]

Thanks!

[@frackcenturion]

great work, the EdeHD8 looks like a great scope 🔭👍 might have to get one

[@DSOImager]

Thanks! I've been very happy with mine :)

[@keithkorthals6183]

Nice!

[@DSOImager]

thanks!

[@johnparker9524]

Nice image, I would like to see all of your steps in detail and not just the results. For those of us who are new to PI it would be very helpful.

[@DSOImager]

Thanks John! I have another image completed and ready for its video. I was thinking about doing a full processing video on it.. instead of a "work flow" video like this one. Stay tuned!

[@johnparker9524]

@@DSOImager Look forward to seeing it

[@OlliesSpace]

I would quite like to see that too.👍

[@johnparker9524]

When you created your different mask I suppose you used the rangeselection to do them. Did you just use the lower limit or did you use both the lower and upper limits? In order to just work on the green how did you isolate just the green channel?

[@DSOImager]

I used a range mask. When using range masks, I only use the upper limit and smoothness. In this shot.. the brightest areas were green.. no trouble isolating the color. Most of the "white" parts are actually green. If you pull back curves on them you'll reveal the color. If I'm working on an image where I need to isolate specific colors.. I'll use a color mask. (Script > Utilities > colorMask) I rarely use colormasks.. 90% of what I want to achieve can usually be done with range masks. My crescent shot I did use a cyan color mask to tweak that o3 shell a little bit near the end.

[@johnparker9524]

@@DSOImager Thank you

[@JoesAstrophoto]

Stunning image James! After seeing your video I'm going to blatantly rip you off and do the same image lol. Same exact gear as well so it makes perfect sense right? I'm guessing you used bin2 mode. If you want I can take the same test image of the Witches Broom and see if I get the same resulting giant halo from the reducer as well. I probably won't do a video on mine though, but will shamelessly post to Instagram hahaha

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Joe! I think we've been on the same wave length for a bit.. We had the crescent... I was just thinking about M27 and then saw your video drop.. I have the elephant trunk complete.. just need to work on the video for it.. great minds and all :) By all means.. give it a go.. I would love to see how yours turns out. Yep.. I'm using bin2/locked/11MP mode. I would really appreciate seeing how the Witches Broom works out for you.. I think the only difference in our imaging train is the filters. If you don't get the Halo.. I can go back to astronomik and ask them whats up!! lol.

[@joy2u164]

Post on IG!

[@DSOImager]

Just Posted on IG @dso_imager