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 supernova remnant, many portions of which have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun which exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. At the time of the explosion, the supernova would have appeared brighter than Venus in the sky, and visible in the daytime. The remnants have since expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter. The is about 6 times the diameter, and 36 times the area, of the full Moon! While previous distance estimates have ranged from 1,200 to 5,800 light-years, a recent determination of 2,400 light-years is based on direct astrometric measurements.
Object Designations: NGC 6960
Also known as: Veil Nebula
Constellation: Cygnus
Object Type: Diffuse nebula
Distance: 2,400 light-years away
Magnitude: 7
Discovery: William Herschel in 1784
This final image is:
107 – 4 minute subs at 100 gain – no filter about 7 hours of integration
I processed the images using Pixinsight using:
Blink to clear out low quality images
Weighted Batch Balance
SpectroPhotometricCalibration
AutomaticBackgroundExtractor
BlurExterminator
NoiseExterminator
EZProcessing Suite Softstretch (img version 1)
GeneralizedHyperbolicStrectch (img version 2)
ColorCalibration on both versions
StarXTerminator
Curves on both versions using other version as mask
Pixmath to put stars back with both images.
