Had a nice week up in Overgaard with its wonderful Bortle 1 skies. I had good visibility on the Veil nebula so I decided to spend the week taking both RGB and SHO versions of this familiar object. I shot this almost a year ago and this target was the first object I shot with my AM5/Redcat 51 setup. That early shot was using my ASI533MC camera and I actually centered on NGC6974 which was the central part. This version used my ASI294MM camera which has a higher FOV and I was able to capture both the full east and west components of the Veil Nebula complex.
This version is the RGB version. I used
Bill Blanshan's pixel math process for star reduction. This worked out quite well. Anyone who has shot the Veil nebula knows the background stars can be over the top and block a lot of the nebula details. I will make a second post with my SHO version. I don't know how to make multiple versions in one post and actually the exposers were different so it is probably best to have a second post. While I believe my RGB version is pretty close to true colors as I calibrated it using PixInsight Spectral Color Calibration tool, clearly the nebulosity of my SHO version is far superior to my RGB version. The number of subs/color are not that different, 35 vs 45 for RGB vs SHO, so I really don't think that is the difference but it may be the cause.
This was a fun project and I've learned a lot.
Enjoy!
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