Western Veil Nebula (Caldwell 34)
Chasing the Western Veil Nebula
Current stageCapturing
- PlanningPreparing the target, composition, and capture requirements.
- CapturingCollecting pictures across one or more imaging sessions.
- CalibratingSelecting, calibrating, and stacking the captured frames.
- ProcessingDeveloping the stacked data into the final image.
- CompletedPublishing the finished image and lessons learned.
A multi-session journey to explore the Western Veil Nebula and learn more about astrophotography.
- Started
- 17/07/2026
- Updated
- 29/07/2026
- Sessions
- 2
If all goes according to plan, this section will eventually contain a beautiful astrophotography image.
If history repeats itself, it will first contain several hours of cloud watching, at least one forgotten setting, an impressive collection of calibration frames, and a newfound appreciation for patience.
Either way, I’ll share the entire journey—from planning the target and capturing the data to processing the final image. Every project is another chance to learn, improve my workflow, and become a little better at turning tiny photons into something worth looking at.
Pre preparing the target
I wanted to see how the Veil nebula would look like with my current camera. The universe politely reminded me that the Veil Nebula is absolutely enormous. I guess I would need to capture the Veil nebula in two sections..
Or maybe i can just get a 135mm telescope for this.. hmmm.. 🤔
No Tim.. focus!!Right.. so its settle, Im getting the new telescope.. I mean.. I will shoot the Western Veil nebula first.
17 July 2026
Session one
0 frames
A suprise clear start of the night happened today, so started to setup my gear a bit after sundown. Did what i thought to be a decent polar alignment with a total error of around 30 arcseconds, which I found good enough for now since I already had a feeling clouds would roll in soon. Thought it would be nice to get at least a couple of shots in.
Disappointed preview
So after i did the polar alignment, I set the target in N.I.N.A. and slew to it. Added a new sequence and set all the settings, including the option to cool my camera (never used that before for some reason 😅). So before I triggered the sequence, I wanted at least one test shot to see if everything is still OK.
Well.. what can I say.. something went wrong. The preview was shot with the same settings I put in for the sequence, meaning this is a preview with 120s exposure time. Not exactly sure what happened, but I guess it’s not a good sign when you rush the setup as you can clearly see the stars are not round.
Since I don’t have any lighting in my backyard, nor that i have a head lamp I could put on, I came to realize I couldn’t re-setup my gear. Positive side effect is that I know my next purchase.. a new head lamp.
21 Juli - New gear day!
Today my latest astrophotography upgrade arrived: a brand-new headlamp 😄
Not exactly the glamorous piece of kit people expect, but arguably the one most likely to save an imaging session.. and possibly my dignity. It means I can finally set up after dark without blindly fumbling around, pretending I know where everything is. As an added bonus, checking on the rig during a session no longer requires navigating the backyard like a sleep-deprived raccoon.
I’ve managed to keep the tripod standing through every session so far.
The headlamp should make that even easier… unless, of course, this purchase is the final ingredient the universe was waiting for. If my next post starts with “Well…”, you’ll know exactly what happened.
23 July 2026
Session two
100 frames · 120s each
About a week after the last session, a new clear night was upon us. So it was time to try my luck again with the Wester Veil nebula. Hoping this session will go smoother then the last one.
Prepping the setup
So today I wanted to try something different, since I noticed on several previous sessions that my initial polar alignment was quite off. Trying to aim the mount towards Polaris often gave quite a bit of alignment error.
So instead of bolting down the mount downwards on the tripod, I was thinking: “What if I just lock the mount first, do the initial Three Point Polar Alignment (TPPA) and adjust the Azimuth error by unlocking the mount.”
I should’ve thought about this earlier since it much easier to come within one arcminute then to move the whole tripod, and hoping the tripod stays leveled 😆
A better preview..?
When trying to fix the alignment errors I noticed there was a drift on the Azimuth alignment, where ever second the target drifted two arcseconds away. After some time trying to get to the target I wondered why this was happening. So I looked at my remote control for the mount, and I saw the mount wasn’t tracking.. such an idiot.. 🫣
After I enabled tracking and redid the TPPA, it was much easier to solve the errors.. or so I thought..
I did a test shot and initially it looked quite decent on a small resolution. But while preparing the picture for this section, I noticed a small drift on the stars. They are not round..
I did shoot 100 pictures this session, and I was curious about the results thus far. So did a quick post processing, and it was quite underwhelming to be honest, but then again, at that time I didn’t know about the tracking issue. So I’m wondering now if I want to keep those pictures of this session. Also because the moon was visible for like 80%.