The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus. It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a large but relatively faint supernova remnant. The source supernova exploded some 5,000 to 8,000 years ago, and the remnants have since expanded to cover an area roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter of the full moon). 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 HST analysis of the nebula emissions indicate the presence of oxygen, sulfur, and hydrogen. This is also one of the largest, brightest features in the x-ray sky.

This image is a closeup of the Western Veil, consisting of NGC 6960 (the "Witch's Broom") near the foreground star 52 Cygni.

The nebula was discovered on 1784 September 5 by William Herschel. When finely resolved, some parts of the image appear to be rope-like filaments. The shock waves are so thin, less than one part in 50,000 of the radius, that the shell is visible only when viewed exactly edge-on, giving the shell the appearance of a filament. Undulations in the surface of the shell lead to multiple filamentary images, appearing intertwined.

Even though the nebula has a relatively bright integrated magnitude of 7, it is spread over a large area, and the nebula is notorious for being difficult to see without a telescope and OIII filter. Almost all light from this nebula is emitted at this wavelength.

This rendition was inspired by Jimmy Walker (JWalk) and his "Up Close and Personal" version on CN in early November. The image was captured with the Meade 12"LX200, using the Atik 383L+ mono at F6.56. Astronomik's 12nm Halpha, and OIII narrow band filters were used (no SII in this).

All subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 10 minutes each.

Ha : 39 subs (6.50 hr) on Nov 12th. Nov 26th and Nov 27th.

O3 : 15 subs (2.50 hr) on Nov 29th and Dec 3rd.

S2 : None.

Processing was done with PixInsight, following (for the most part) kayronjm's tutorial of Feb. 24th. Both Ha and O3 were used to develop the Luminance image. But I struggled in adding the two luminances together. With a lot of fiddling, I was able to boost the combined luminance to something comparable to the Ha. Only Ha and O3 were collected for the color mix. See below formula.

R = Ha

G = 0.50 Ha + 0.50 O3

B = O3

North is up (and west is to the right). This is a slight crop top and bottom, with a larger amount on each end. A small amount of vignetting shows up in the corners, especially lower right.