The Veil Nebula

The Veil Nebula (also called the Cygnus Loop) is the remains of a star that annihilated itself in a supernova explosion some 8,000 years ago. Located roughly 2,100 light years away in the Cygnus constellation, it spans more than 110 light years. It’s so large from our point of view (wider than six full moons!), that to capture it all, I had to shoot a two-panel mosaic of it with the widest-angle telescope I had at the time.

The progenitor star was more than 20 times as massive than the sun before it blew itself apart. The red in the image represents concentrations of hydrogen gas while the blue represents oxygen gas.

This is probably one of the most widely known supernova remnants in the sky and is certainly a popular target with amateur astrophotographers.

Supernovas are an extremely important phenomenon in the evolution of the universe. The English astrophysicist Fred Hoyle was the first to suggest that elements heavier than hydrogen (such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and other building blocks of life) were manufactured in the interiors of stars and distributed into the cosmos through supernova explosions. This is a process known as nucleosynthesis.

It contains three formations that primarily interest astrophotographers. The first is NGC 6995, which people refer to colloquially as the Eastern Veil or the Bat Nebula. It’s located in the upper-right of the frame. The second is the Witch’s Broom or Western Veil, NGC 6960, located in the lower-left of the image. Just to the right of that is Pickering’s Triangle.

In Joe Haldeman’s novel Mindbridge, the Veil is the remnant of the home star of a race of omnipotent, immortal beings who decided to destroy themselves.

See below for higher-resolution closeups of these areas.