NGC6960 - Witches Broom Nebula - Right in Time for Halloween

How Fitting for Halloween......My latest image - NGC6960 - Witches Broom in Hubble Palette Narrowband

Commonly referred to as the Witches Broom or the Western Veil of the larger Veil Nebula, this lies approximately 1470 Light years away.

In my opinion this is not an easy subject to image, and even more difficult to process, the image details are as follows:

15x600S in 7nm HA
15x600S in 7nm SII
15x600S in 7nm OIII
25 Darks
25 Flats

The HA was also used as a Luminance Layer

NGC6960 - Witches Broom by Simon Todd , on Flickr

Equipment Used:
Imaging Scope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 8-CF 8" F4 Newtonian
Guide Scope: Celestron Telescopes C80ED Refractor
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8 Pro
Imaging Camera: Atik Cameras 383L+ Mono CCD Cooled to -20C
Guide Camera: Qhyccd QHY5L-II
Image Acquisition: Main Sequence Software Sequence Generator Pro
Guide Software: PHD2

Processing:
Pre-Processing: Maxim-DL for STacking, Darks and Flats Subtracting and Alignment of Colour Planes
Post Processing: Photoshop CS5, Noise Ninja

Yes indeed Simon.....this is no easy processing subject. Star 52 Cygni is just so bright and always becomes a headache....requiring hours of work to try tame how it looks via the NB filters.

I have done some imaging in this area and for once I think 'less is more'. I now find that just the Ha & OIII (without using the SII data) makes a much more striking final image.....because of the very sharp contrast in the Red & Blue that will emerge.

It is a hard call...we all want to show the full detail collected from all emission lines....showing detail rather than just making pretty pictures. Perhaps you will give Ha & OIII a try and show here just for others to make a comparison.....

Here you go Brendan

15x300S in R + 15x600S HA
15x300S in G + 15x600S OIII
15x300S in B + 15x600S OIII

NGC6960 - Witches Broom-RGB+HA+OIII by Simon Todd , on Flickr

Thanks Simon.

Personally I prefer the 2nd version.....would be interested to know what others think!