Veil Nebula (Western), NGC6960

July 2021

Imaging: TS80 apo, ZWO ASI533 (gain 100, 0C), L-Enhance
Subs: 319x120s (10h), darks, flats, and darkflats
Software: NINA, Phd2, PixInsight

(Additional notes below)

Gallery

Notes

This is the western part of the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant. From Wikipedia, the source supernova was 20 times more massive than our sun and exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. The overall Veil is quite large, spanning about 6 times the diameter of our moon. This is just the western part of it and it usually takes a mosaic of four or more images to get the whole nebula. Within this Western Veil, the structure at the top is called the Witch's Broom

I captured the shots that went into this image over 4 nights in early July. This came after a particularly frustrating period for astrophotography: we had gone through more than a month where either rain, clouds, or smoke prevented any imaging. On the plus side, I did get fully caught up on my stack of unread magazines! And the end result was totally satisfying and hopefully mesmerizing to you as well.

Update: the image shown now is actually a reprocess of the original data. To see the difference in the quality of the output, take a look at this GIF or the original image.