The Eastern Veil Nebula taken on October 22 and October 25th, 2024. Part of the Cygnus Loop which is a supernova remnant in our galaxy. Shot with Redca51 250mm focal length scope over two nights. Total exposure was about 4 hours composed of stacked 180 second images.
The colors come from ionized oxygen and hydrogen. Nebula are good targets for shooting in light polluted regions because you can use a narrowband filter that filters out other light wavelengths except for the hydrogen (red) and oxygen colors (green/blue). I used a very popular filter called an L-Enhance dual narrowband filter for this image.
This is the first time I was able to successfully do a meridian flip. That means that under full software control, the scope tracked the object as it rose in the night sky from the east, then just after it was at it’s highest point, the scope stopped tracking, moved from the east side of the tripod to the west side of the tripod, recentered on the object, restarted tracking, refocused, restarted guiding, and then restarted imaging for the rest of the night following the object to the west. From the camera’s perspective, the images taken after it crossed the meridian are flipped upside down from the images taken before the meridian crossing.
The scope has to do the meridian flip, or else the scope or the counterweight will crash into the tripod as it tracks from the east to the west.
Below is another image using the 750mm focal length Celestron XLT scope taken on October 10th, 2023. The mount used was the OpenAstroMount (OAM). The image is a stack of 60 frames of 60 second exposures (or 1 hour total).
