The Veil Nebula

Summer is ebbing. The great seasonal triangle of Vega, Deneb and Altair opens the night higher and higher in the sky and soon will at zenith by 10pm. That means that I soon won't be able to image targets in Cygnus, since they are slowly slipping behind the house and out of my -- way too limited -- field of view.

So, before that happens, I figured it was time to capture the glories of The Veil Nebula. This sweeping collection of filamentary wisps of nebulosity is all that remains of a massive star that went supernova between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago. The Veil covers a considerable amount of sky and its constituent components include NGC 6992, NGC 6995 and NGC 6960.

The Veil is particularly strong in hydrogen and oxygen, which makes it an excellent target for narrowband imaging. The following images were taken using the Ha and OIII filters, combined to create bicolor images with a HOO profile.

Spread out over so large an area, the Veil is impossible to fit into one image, even with the Evostar 72ED's quite wide FOV. Thus, I imaged the nebula in two parts: the Eastern Veil, including NGC 6992 and then the Western Veil, including NGC 6960. Late August weather hasn't been kind to sky watchers here in New York, but I managed to get four nights over the past two weeks, spending two nights on each image.

The two resulting images were then combined in Pixinsight to create a single image that captures most, though not all, of the Veil Nebula complex.

The Western Veil, including NGC 6960:

Captured on two nights in mid August. The below image is composed of 88, 180-second sub-exposures - 44 shot through the Ha filter and 44 through the OIII filter. The image nicely captures Pickering's Triangle, the expanse of twisting, gossamer filaments to the right edge of the image.

The Eastern Veil, including NGC 6992

This portion of the Veil is a favorite target for imagers. I have shot it before with both the DSLR and the SSP -- and I think I managed to capture parts of it years ago with the Meade DSI. But the ASI1600 does it particular justice. This image was captured over two nights and is composed of 78, 180-second sub-exposures, including 42 shot through the Ha filter and 36 through the OIII filter.

The Veil Nebula Complete (well, mostly)

With both the Western and Eastern sections captured, I used dnaLinearFit, Star Alignment and GradientMergeMosaic in Pixinsight to combine the two images and produce the below mosaic, which captures the majority of the nebula complex. Some nebulosity was clipped at the top and bottom of the image, which leaves me something to target next year.

I am very pleased with both panels and the final combined mosaic. It is a nice way to see summer come to its end.