Veil Nebula and Surrounding Area

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The Veil Nebula is a cloud of ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus. It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant. The supernova which created the nebula occured between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago, and the remnant has since expanded to cover an area of approx. 3 degrees. Estimations for its distance range from 1,400 to 2,600 light years.

The Milky Way in Cygnus, zoom lens photograph.
NGC 6992/5 - Veil Nebula Arc, Wright-Newtonian CCD-image.
NGC 6960/74/79 - Western Veil and Pickering's Triangle, Wright-Newtonian image.

Exposure Data

Instrument: Nikkor-Q Auto 135mm f/2.8 telephoto lens
F/stop: 5.6
Exposure: 5 x 10 min
Camera: Canon 350D with Baader UV-IR-Cut-Filter
Sensitivity: ISO 800
Date: September 10, 2018
Exposure start: 23:12 MESZ
Location: Wallackhaus, Carinthia
Conditions: Visual limiting magnitude 6.3 mag, SQM-L sky brightness 21.2 mag/arcsec², seeing 2.5" FWHM, temperature 5°C->2°C, moderate to no wind, no dew
Autoguider: Lacerta MGEN
Enhancement: Basic data reduction, registration and combination, background flattening, color calibration, noise reduction, deconvolution, non-linearization, local contract enhancement, star size reduction
Notes: Thin high-altitude clouds passing through during the exposure series. Photo taken during my stay at the Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße in September 2018.