NGC 6960 Veil Nebula

NGC 6960 - Veil Nebula:

This western end of the Veil Nebula is also known as the Witch's Broom.

Image below was taken with a modified Digital Rebel through Orion ED80 Refractor with Televue .80X Reducer. The ED80 was mounted on an Orion Atlas EQ-G mount. The EQMOD ASCOM driver was used to drive the mount directly via an EQDIR interface module.

Equipment used:

• Orion EQ-G Atlas Mount
• Orion ED 80 APO Refractor with Televue .80X Reducer and Baader IR Filter - for imaging
• Modified Canon Digital Rebel (300D) - for imaging
• Orion Short Tube 80mm refractor - for autoguiding
• Modified Logitech 1.3 Megapixel Fusion USB 2.0 webcam - for autoguiding

Temperature ranged between 47 and 52 degrees Fahrenheit and skies were clear with poor seeing. PHD Guiding software was used for autoguiding. The webcam software WcCtrl was used to enable long exposure modes on the Logitech Fusion webcam while autoguiding.

71 two-minute exposures at ISO 1600 were combined in Images Plus using Sigma Clipped Median. Full Frame Image reduced in size for display.

For a larger 2000 X 1400 Pixel size of above image CLICK HERE.

Jupiter :

10:03 pm - 8/10/07

Jupiter image below was taken with 20 inch GOTO Starmaster Dobsonian with Modified Pro 9000 webcam and 2.5X Powermate. Video resolution of 960 X 720 was used to capture a two-minute uncompressed AVI file at 15 frames per second using Open Video Capture. Seeing was very poor. Jupiter does not get very high from PA at this time; it was low at 23 degrees altitude for this image. Because of poor seeing I used Registax 4 software to stack only the better 23 frames of the 1800 frame AVI file. Image was aggressively processed and reduced in size:

For other lunar, planetary and solar images taken with the Pro 9000 CLICK HERE.

Friendly Bird:

On the observing field we had a very friendly bird hanging out with us during the day. The bird had no fear of people and would approach and stay very close. We fed the bird bread and cracker crumbs and also put a plate of water out for it to drink. When I was tearing down to go home, the bird hopped up into by van through the side door. I've done some backyard birding, but this bird was not familiar to me.

Oh No! Not another tree cut. This one is on the observing field perimeter in the direction of the Coudersport sky glow:

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Astro Imaging with Canon Digital Rebel XT Camera