HOTSHOTS

JEAN M DEAN, GUERNSEY, 23 JULY – 7 AUG 2018

Jean says: “I find the Veil Nebula fascinating; the scattered remains of the supernova have created some amazing filamentary structures that I wanted to capture. I created two synthetic RGB versions, one as normal and one without stars. I removed the stars from the individual monochrome narrowband images before combining into a starless version. Each RGB was stretched separately and then combined into a final blended version. I think this gave additional depth and detail to the image.”

Equipment: Starlight Xpress Trius mono CCD camera, Takahashi FSQ-106 refractor, Sky-Watcher AZ EQ6-GT mount Exposure: 13x20’ each for Ha, OIII, SII Software: PixInsight, Photoshop

BBC Sky at Night Magazine says: “Jean’s image is so detailed and crisp that the features almost look 3D, as if they were protruding from the page. Other images we have seen of this object are very faint, and pale in comparison to this winning astrophoto.”

About Jean: “Growing up in the Apollo era I developed a fascination for space exploration and astronomy. My passion for astrophotography has grown from that and every time a new deep-space object appears on my sensor I still get a feeling of amazement that I have just recorded a very distant moment in the history of the Universe.”