The Veil Nebula, also called the Cirrus Nebula, is an expanding cloud of gas from a supernova explosion approximately 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. The above image is a CCD image of a portion of the Veil Nebula (NGC6960) taken on May 23, 2004. I also have an image of the Eastern Veil Nebula. This image was taken at the Sunglow Ranch, near Pearce, Arizona. Located in southeastern Arizona, the Sunglow Ranch has dark skies and is a nice place for amateur astronomy. The staff are very friendly.
This is an RGB composite image taken with an ST-8E CCD using a CFW-8 color filter wheel. The bright star in this image, known as 52 Cygni, makes it difficult to image this relatively faint nebula, and image processing is challenging. A number of short exposures were stacked and summed to produce this image. The images were taken through a Takahashi Epsilon 250 at prime focus operating at f3.4.
NGC 6960 (the Veil Nebula)
Constellation: Cygnus
RA: 20h 45m 54.3s Dec: +30d 44' 02"
May 23, 2004
Image by Sid Leach
Sunglow Ranch, Arizona
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