Above is a 2023 reprocessing of the same data. Down below is the original 2018 processing and description. The 2018 version is the worst image I ever processed. Even then I thought it was terrible but I couldn’t figure out how to do better. I thought a lot of it was my fairly thin data (just over three hours) and that is true but the bigger part was being unwilling to accept that and still try to extract as much detail as I could. What resulted is, frankly, horrible. I wanted to see if I could make a version, with newer tools and a lot more experience, that was, if not good, at least pleasant to look at.

This is an image of the Western Veil Nebula. Processing this one was a bit of a challenge and I went through several iterations thanks to helpful feedback from more experienced image processors. I seem to have a bit of a heavy hand on the processing controls and I’m trying to tone that back. Of course, getting more and better data is the best place to start but that’s a challenge for another day.

The Western Veil is part of a supernova remnant called the Cygnus Loop. Collectively, they cover several degrees of the sky and are much too large for a single field in even modest focal length (by astrophotography standards).

You can find the image on astrobin.