The Milky Way, our home Galaxy
The Milky Way, our home Galaxy seen edge on, features many of the sky’s best sights, and summer is the ideal season to explore them.
High overhead, a few degrees south of Epsilon Cygni, are two wonderful lace like gaseous nebulae, forming together the Veil Nebula (NGC 6960 and NGC 6992)
Veil Nebula, is one of the best-known supernova remnants, deriving its name from its delicate, draped filamentary structures. The entire nebula is 110 light-years across, covering six full moons on the sky as seen from Earth.
The distance to the nebula is not precisely known, but Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) data supports a distance of about 1,470 light-years.
The nebula was discovered on 1784 September 5 by William Herschel. He described the western end of the nebula as: "Extended; passes thro' 52 Cygni... near 2 degree in length", and described the eastern end as "Branching nebulosity...
The Veil Nebula is a frequent object of study for astronomers because it is large, located "relatively" close to Earth, and makes a good example of a middle-aged supernova remnant. For amateur astronomers, the nebula makes one of the most spectacular objects in the northern sky.
Different regions of the Veil Nebula have different nicknames. The Western Veil Nebula is also known as the Witch’s Broom, while the Eastern Veil is sometimes called the Network Nebula.
Even though the Veil Nebula is relatively bright with an apparent magnitude of 7.0, it stretches over a large area and its surface brightness is pretty low, which makes it difficult to see without an OIII filter.
While the nebula can be found using binoculars under very dark skies, the intricate lacework that it is known for can be seen in a 200 mm (8-inch) or larger telescope.
An amazing photograph taken by our member Andreas Eleftheriou depicting the marvelous Veil Nebula.
Below you can find all the details regarding the exposure and various technical data.
Phedias Hadjicharalambous
Cyprus Astronomy Organιsation
West Veil - Witch's Broom in Ha(S2O3)O3
Acquisition type: Electronically-Assisted Astronomy (EAA)
Technical card:
Imaging telescope or lens:Takahashi FSQ -106ED4
Imaging cameras:QSI 690WSG-8, ASI 1600 MC - Cooled
Mount:Software Bisque MYT
Guiding camera:ZWO ASI 290MM Mini
Software:Software Bisque The Sky X Pro, APT - Astro Photography Tool, PixInsight, DeepSkyStacker Deep Sky Stacker (DSS)
Filters:AstroDon 5nm H-Alpha filter, AstroDon 5nm Sii filter, AstroDon 5nm Oiii filter
Resolution: 3354x2396
Dates:July 21, 2019, July 29, 2019, July 30, 2019, Aug. 5, 2019, Aug. 6, 2019, Aug. 7, 2019
Frames:
AstroDon 5nm Oiii filter: 150x300" bin 1x1
AstroDon 5nm Sii filter: 100x300" bin 1x1
AstroDon 5nm H-Alpha filter: 150x300" bin 1x1
Integration: 33.3 hours
Avg. Moon age: 15.24 days
Avg. Moon phase: 34.09%
Astrometry.net job: 2850987
RA center: 311.517 degrees
DEC center: 30.663 degrees
Pixel scale: 1.428 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: 95.128 degrees
Field radius: 0.817 degrees
Locations: my balcony, Limassol, Cyprus
Data source: Backyard
Description
This is a cropped part of the previous image, with additional data acquired with the QSI690 camera (hence the smaller FOV). It was an interesting experiment in combining data from two different cameras and working on the colour palette of Ha(S2O3)O3 in order to show the delicate details of the nebulosity. Any comments are welcome!
