During our SWAT telescope meeting in Zwischenbergen, I also pointed my DWARF 3 at NGC 6960, the Western Veil Nebula.
At the time, I was still quite new to the DWARF 3, so I was working with 15-second exposures. Just like with my image of M17 from the same meeting, the conditions were far from perfect: close to midsummer in northern Germany, the sky never becomes truly dark. Still, I wanted to see what the little smart telescope could make of one of the most striking parts of the Veil Nebula.
The DWARF kept collecting images in the background while we spent the warm night observing, talking and enjoying the telescope meeting. Even under the bright summer sky, the delicate filamentary structure of NGC 6960 came through surprisingly well.
Unfortunately, the original files from this session were later lost when one of my hard drives failed. The finished image survived, though, and I recently gave it another small round of processing.
So while I can no longer tell you the exact total integration time, I still have the result – and a reminder that backups are considerably less exciting than nebulae, but occasionally more important.
You can read more about that midsummer telescope meeting here: Midsummer under the stars with the DWARF 3.