Huuh, this shooting was really time-pressured.

At home, before heading to that scenic peak called Ratitovec, I checked in the Planit Pro app to see if I’d have any decent deep-sky composition with the universe and mountains that night. Of course, I focused on Slovenia’s highest mountain — Triglav. And yes, to my surprise and delight, the setting Veil Nebula appeared right above the peak! At the same time, it was the only deep-sky object that could be captured above Triglav from that exact location.

That’s why I decided to bring my telephoto lens along just for this shot!

Since the summit offers such incredible views in every direction, I found tons of beautiful compositions, so I ended up devoting relatively little time to this deep-sky capture. Or rather, I wasn’t sure whether to photograph it or just take a short break. I had just over half an hour left for setuping up and capturing all the frames, because after that the nebula set behind the mountains.

It’s hard to resist shots like this — especially since I was thrilled with the beautiful composition featuring Triglav.

For this photo, I really wanted to keep the processing as natural as possible and i can say that i am super satisfied with the result. Actually its one of my favourite deepscape shot till today. I also trained a lot with H-alpha data on this one, so I learned some new things again!

The Veil Nebula is one of the visual marvels of the night sky. lt’s the brightest remains of what was once a star 20 times more massive than our Sun, which exploded around 8,000 years ago as a supernova. Its fast-moving blast wave is crashing into a wall of cool, dense interstellar gas, exciting it to glow. In images, the remnants’ long diaphanous filaments look like a bridal veil, thus its name. The entire loop of matter — inspiring its other name, Cygnus Loop — spans 110 light-years across and covers 3˚ of sky.