Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 6960  ·  NGC 6979  ·  The star 52 Cyg  ·  Veil Nebula
Veil Nebula, Jeff Marcks
Veil Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

Veil Nebula

Veil Nebula, Jeff Marcks
Veil Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

Veil Nebula

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

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 (about 6 times the diameter, and 36 times the area, of the full Moon). While previous distance estimates have ranged from 1200 to 5800 light-years, a recent determination of 2400 light-years is based on direct astrometric measurements.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Veil Nebula, Jeff Marcks