The supernova remnant in Cygnus variously called the Veil Nebula, the Network Nebula, the Lacework Nebula, or the Cygnus Loop. Nearby is the bright and large star cluster NGC 6940 over the border in Vulpecula. It is obvious in binoculars but not often recorded in the same frame as the Veil. But the wide field of the little RedCat astrograph is ideal for framing such Milky Way starfields. This shows both the eastern and western halves of the Veil as well as the little bits in between such as prominent Pickering’s Triangle component. This is a stack of 7 exposures, each 8-minutes at f/4.9 with the William Optics RedCat 51mm scope, and the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 3200 and with the Optolong L-Enhance dual narrow-band filter in place for all exposures. It picks up the Hydrogen-Alpha reds and Oxygen III greens very well, but with little of the cyan tint usually associated with OIII visible in this case. The field is 8° by 5°. Encroaching dawn twilight prevented me taking a set of unfiltered images to blend in with these but they would not have been as essential for this field. Shot May 27/28, 2020 from home.
Venus (above), Aldebaran (below) and the Hyades star cluster in a closeup set into the dawn twilight on the morning of July 13, 2017. A single tracked exposure with the 200m lens and Canon 6D.
The 5-day-old waxing crescent Moon near the Beehive star cluster, Messier 44, in Cancer on the evening of May 10, 2019, set in the deep blue twilight sky, and with Earthshine still visible on the dark side of the Moon. From eastern North America this evening the Moon appeared in front of the Beehive, but by the time darkness fell out west the Moon had moved east of the Beehive by a moon diameter. Technical: This is an HDR stack of 6 exposures for the lunar disk, tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro using Fusion/Natural Blend, with the sky from a single exposure, the longest in the set — HDRs can’t ever align and blend the Moon and stars accurately, as the Moon is shifting against the star background slightly. Taken through the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm refractor at f/6 and with the Canon 6D MkII at ISO 400, and with exposures from 1 second in two stop increments to 1/500. As a further note, I tried AuroraHDR 2018 on this and it failed miserably, producing a very noisy image. Photoshop HDR produced a lot of edge artifacts, and luminosity masking was going to be tough to blend, naturally, so I gave Photomatix a go — it worked but only for the Moon itself.
