The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan). The beautiful structure of entwined gas and dust are the remnants from an exploding star that occurred approximately 8000 -10,000 years ago in massive supernova!
 
“It is believed that this star was 20 times more massive than our Sun, since that time it has expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, and 36 times the area, of the full moon)” (Referenced from planetarium app Stellarium).
 
This large nebula is very tenuous in nature and has a very low surface area so you really need quite a dark sky to capture it. At my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn it does not get very high in the northern sky only about 30 degrees. It’s also only seen for a few months from August to October so it’s not an easy object to capture.
 
I’ve taken a closer look at the Veil Nebula with its many parts, the Eastern Veil also know as NGC 6992 or Caldwell 34 and NGC 6995 is quite colourful with very intricate structures.  The Western Veil is known as NGC 6960 or the Witch’s broom, has this pretty bright star embedded into it only known as 52 Cygni.
 
There is another interesting feature called Pickering’s Triangle that I’ve also managed to capture in the middle of the nebula.
 
To capture this image I used a Canon 6D Mark 11 camera with a 70-200mm lens attached to a tracking telescope in the observatory. I wanted to capture a wider field of this area and really liked having that large open star cluster NGC 6940 in the constellation of Vulpecula in the filed of view.

​ I’ve also cropped in to concentrate of the large faint nebula itself with the Eastern and Western sections included.
 
There were 20 x 3 minutes images with corresponding dark frames captured, with ISO 3200.
​Images were stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop.

The Hubble Space Telescope has recently taken another look at this amazing nebula, please go to: 
​Hubble Revisits the Veil Nebula - Apr 2, 2021 -
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-revisits-the-veil-nebula
 
Hubble’s Caldwell Catalog – Caldwell 34 – Dec 18, 2019 -
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/caldwell-34
 
~ The International Astronomical Unions Constellations (IAU) star charts at:
https://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations/

Because of all the wet and gloomy weather, I’ve revisited the images of the planets that I posted on Spaceweather to make up a photo montage to show how big Jupiter was at opposition as compared to Saturn and Mars.
 
When I inserted Mars into the picture, I was so amazed to see that the light and dark features on the surface of Mars looked just like a face of an old wise man…can you see it too!
 
Many great astronomers including William Herschel have been tricked by seeing strange things on the Martian surface…I can see why now!
 
This phenomena is called Pareidolia, and Mars is one of those places known for it to happen please see the link at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
 
All images were taken with a Meade LX200 GPS 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC camera with 3x Barlow lens attached. (Planets to scale in size not distance)
 

I was lucky again the following night to get a few minutes of steady seeing to capture some videos of Mars and was very surprised to see so much detail on the surface.  You can clearly see the large plain of Syrtis Major in the images even though the planet is still a long way away from Earth.
 
Mars will be at opposition on the 8th December so it will grow in size over the next couple of months, as it gets closer to Earth.
 
My images were taken at ‘My Stardust Observatory’ with a Meade LX200 GPS 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI videos were captured and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.

 (Please see my telescope setup below)

I was out at My Stardust Observatory for the new Moon long weekend and was lucky enough to get about an hour and half of clear steady sky to take some pictures of Saturn and Jupiter in the observatory.
​
Here in Australia, Saturn is now high up in the sky where you can sometimes get some really good seeing.

After taking a couple of AVI video’s I was delighted to see that I’d captured the darker North Polar Cap and also some of the subtle North Temperate and Equatorial Zones and Belts with the North and South Equatorial Belts being very prominent. The rings are just so beautiful with the Cassini division clearly defined; you can also see the dark shadow of the ring on the planet.

Another very interesting feature is the colour of the South Polar Cap that had a soft bluish/aqua hue; this shows up on all the AVI movie files and looks quite lovely.
 
My images were taken with a Meade LX200 GPS 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI videos were captured with 3000 frames and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.

I was out at My Stardust Observatory and was lucky enough to get some clear steady sky to take pictures of Jupiter and Saturn in the observatory.
 
Jupiter was very bright in the night sky when it was just two days away from opposition in this photo. This opposition of Jupiter is one of its closest approaches to Earth since 1963, at only 590.6 million kilometres, this is why the planet looks so much brighter in the sky!
 
I’m hoping to get some more images of Jupiter over the coming week before our Earth races away from the planet. (Earth has a faster orbit around the Sun than Jupiter because we are closer to our Star)
 
There’s so much detail to see on the planet with all the different Belts and Zones on show, there are many White and Red Ovals that can be seen along with some lovely blue coloured Festoons in the turbulent atmosphere in the North Equatorial Belt and Zones. The Great Red Spot is nearing the western limb and rotating out of view.
 
~ Jupiter with its approaching moon Io on the 25th September 2022 ~

In the second image, Jupiter’s smallest moon Io is approaching the planet.
 
My images were taken with a Meade LX200 GPS 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached.
​AVI videos were captured and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.

3D Jupiter - look into the centre between the two Jupiter images and gently cross your eyes
Jupiter should go 3D : - )

I’ve made up a picture with two images of Jupiter taken just 5 minutes apart…. If you look into the image and cross your eyes, Jupiter will pop out and go 3D…. I hope you can to see it :-D
 
My images were taken at My Stardust Observatory with a Meade LX200 GPS 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached.

AVI videos were captured and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.

~ ‘Starry Starry Night’ How to learn the night sky ~
18th August 2022 at 1pm
 
This is the first adult presentation that I’ve been able to do since Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted and it was for Science Week 2022.
 
It was so lovely to spend time again with many very interested members of the public to show them how to learn the night sky from there own back garden.
 
I also touched on how they could also begin to take some photographs of the night sky and other helpful information to start their journey of discovery into our starry starry night J
 
Another resource is the Astrolink page on my website will help greatly in finding Star Charts at: http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-links.html
 
*** Happy Stargazing *** Noeleen :-D

I travelled out to ‘My Stardust Observatory’ specifically to try and take some images of Comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) in a dark sky and was rewarded with one clear night of observing.
 
The comet was easily seen and positioned near the bright star Dschubba in the head of the constellation of Scorpius and showed a lovely clear tail. The pretty greenish colour is due to emission of diatomic carbon gases and looked just stunning among the countless stars in this part of the starry sky.
 
I wanted to do a wide field image to capture the full beauty of this colourful area of nebulosity around the brilliant star Antares so I used a Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens and Canon 6D Mark 2 camera that was piggybacked on top of my tracking Meade 10inch LX200 telescope.
 
The first image was a wide field taken at 135mm with 25x2 minute images stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4…. The second image was taken at 200mm with 5x4 minute images stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4.
 
The Comet made its closest approach to Earth on the 14th July 2022 and from observations it seems to be still brightening. It will reach its closest point to the Sun at perihelion on December 19th 2022.
 
If you want to keep a live track of the comets journey through the stars please go to The Sky Live at: https://theskylive.com/where-is-c2017k2
 
Happy Comet Hunting, Noeleen :-)

Now is the perfect time to look at and also capture pictures of Jupiter, the planet is so bright rising in the eastern sky an hour after sunset that cannot miss it!
 
Jupiter is at opposition on the 26th September, that means that the planet will rise at the same time as the sun sets and will be in the sky for the whole night, it will also be at best viewing as its at its closest to our Earth.
 
When observing and taking images of the planets the sky conditions have to be so steady, if there is any moisture or jet streams in the air it’s very difficult to obtain good videos for stacking.
 
Sometimes you have to be very patience and just keep watching your computer or camera screen and wait for that few minutes when the seeing goes calm. Or another trick is to wait until the planet is half or three quarters way up the sky or near the zenith where the seeing is usually a bit better.
 
This is my first image of Jupiter for 2022 and I’m quite happy with the result, even though there was a lot of moisture in the sky.
 
My images were taken at ‘My Stardust Observatory’ with a Meade 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC –S planetary CMOS camera.
​AVI videos were captured and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.

The sky was not very steady when I took my first images of Saturn 2022, as there was a lot of moisture in the air.  But I still managed to capture a fair picture that shows the Cassini division ring and some detail on the surface.
 
Better nights will come soon I’m sure when this wet weather passes…. I hope!
 
My images were taken at My Stardust Observatory with a Meade 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC –S planetary CMOS camera.
​AVI videos were captured and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.