August 14, 2007

This image is cropped from the wide field image also posted to this gallery. This is the first time I have successfully imaged the central portion of the Veil Nebula showing nebulosity between the eastern and western Veil nebulae. I used my new Hutech-modified Canon XTi dSLR to acheive this personal milestone.

Imaging
Camera: Hutech-modified Canon XTi dSLR
Lens: Canon 70-200mm L zoom operating at 118mm f/5.6
Exposures: 51 x 62 secs
ISO: 1600
Mount: Astrotrac portable equatorial on Manfrotto tripodImage acquisition: ImagesPlus

Processing

1. Canon ZoomBrowser EX - convert RAW to 48 bit TIFF - Custom white balance, Neutral picture style.
2. ImagesPlus - calibrate using dark & flat frames, auto align (correlate, translate, rotate), stack images using Average combine (BP 4425, BG 44).
3. Corel PhotoPaint X3 - convert to 24 bit RGB jpg, moderate increase to saturation.