From the 9th.  I took a while looking for a target and settled on this one low to the North East. We had some breeze and the air was a bit unstable. Along with the warm summer air the stacked image was dissapointing with hardly any visible nebula and significant noise. So after a lot of noise reduction this is what I could pull out. At my imaging scale it did not all fit in the frame, but enough to give the namesake appearance!

From Wikipedia:

The Heart Nebula is located in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787 This is an emission nebula showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes.

The nebula’s intense red output and its configuration are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula’s center. This open cluster of stars known as Melotte 15 contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of our Sun’s mass.

     Low in the southern sky, this is my first run at imaging the popular Trifid Nebula. Almost two hours of 400 second subs brought this image to life. The seeing so low in the sky is generally not so good, but last night the sky was rather clear. This has been cropped by about half of my full imaging scale. 

From http://www.messier-objects.com/messier-20-trifid-nebula/   :

The name Trifid refers to its three-lobed appearance. Messier 20 consists of several different objects: an emission nebula, a reflection nebula, a dark nebula and an open star cluster.

The dark nebula, catalogued as Barnard 85, consists of dust clouds that absorb and block light from the bright objects behind them. It is responsible for the apparent gaps in the larger emission nebula that give M20 its trifurcated look.

Emission nebulae are energised by the ultraviolet light of nearby stars and usually appear red in photographs. These nebulae are clouds of extremely hot hydrogen gas and usually regions where new stars are being formed. The light of the stars illuminates the surrounding clouds, ionizing photons in large portions of the clouds.

Messier 20 is a popular target for amateur astronomers as it is quite bright, even when seen through a small telescope. It has an apparent magnitude of 6.3 and lies at an approximate distance of 5,200 light years, or 1,600 parsecs, from Earth. M20 has a linear diameter of over 40 light years and is only 300,000 years old.

      I was able to capture well over two hours of 5 minute subs to compile this region. Using an unmodified DSLR, I do not pick up much of the hydrogen alpha emissions found in this type of nebula, but it is a dramatic and beautiful target. The processing was complicated for me by the profusion of small stars which are brought up in brightness along with the faint nebulosity. I am starting to look forward to the day I can afford better software to process data like this. Also I would like to try incorporating narrow band data even if it is captured with my stock DSLR. Most serious imagers would scoff at this technique, but us shoestring astronomers have to be willing to be non conformists. The data can be captured in large part, just not efficiently.

From Wikipedia:

The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus, a large but relatively faint supernova remnant. The source supernova exploded circa 3,000 BC to 6,000 BC, and the remnants have since expanded to cover an area roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, or 36 times the area, of the full Moon). The distance to the nebula is  about 1,470 light-years. This is also one of the largest, brightest features in the x-ray sky.

Western Veil Nebula

       Last night the sky was perfect around midnight and I was imaging very well. I thought I could go for a long time, but by 1:30 the moon was up and before long my subs were starting to get washed out. I could have kept going but the magic dark hour was gone so I called it a night. My second sub and several others had satellites crossing the five minute exposures, but the stacking program nixed that data I hope. After tossing a few low scoring frames I put together one hour twenty minutes integrated time for this result. For my setup and Photoshop skill level I am happy with the final cropped result.

      This is known as the Cocoon Nebula, which combines a star cluster, an emission nebula, a reflection nebula, and the vertical “tail” of a dark nebula. Surprising how short the dark time was last night before the moonrise started to dilute the imaging. One hour twenty minutes total image time.

     I have not been out a lot due to cloudy weather, and on this night (the 14th) I thought it had cleared to a wonderful dark clear evening only to have the clouds come in all too soon. in all this left me with just four sub frames of 300 seconds each for only 20 minutes of data. Still, I processed what I had and here are the results! This region will give me more to do for sure as soon as the weather cooperates. 

The East Veil Nebula is a hot plasma emission nebula producing beautiful colors from ionized hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen. The remnants of a supernova though to have occurred five to eight thousand years ago. The image here is just a fraction of the whole system which lies some 1,500 light years away, yet spans a portion of the sky 6 times the diameter of the moon!