Sky this Week

NGC 6992 Northeast portion of Veil Nebula

by Vern on Jun.02, 2006, under Astronomy, Deep sky, Diffuse Nebula

Summer is getting close and fond remembrances from last summer of the western veil viewed through Gary’s 30 inch dob linger. The view of the veil from a dark, transparent site with a large aperature scope is stunning. Quite obviously a video camera from my light polluted back yard cannot get close, but here it is anyway.

Image taken with Celestron Nexstar11, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and Astrovid Stellcam2 video camera at 256 integration, 9/14 gain, and medium gamma. Fifteen minutes of video was dark subtracted, flat field and bias corrected, aligned and stacked with Registax3. Sky clear, temperature 67°F, transparency very good, humidity 60%, no wind, and no clouds.

The veil nebula is the remnants of a supernova that occured an estimated 5 to 10 thousand years ago. NGC 6992 is the northern portion of the eastern part of the expanding debris cloud. The veil nebula is quite large (230 x 160 arc-minutes) and has various catalogue designations (6992, 6995, 6960, 6970, etc.) as it was not known that the faint portions were part of one object.

1 comment for this entry:
  1. Andrew

    That is a really nice shot!!.I have a few that I have taken in the past,including one that I took last week.Of course it isn’t really blog worthy at the moment (I need to play with processing a little bit more!).I find it a neb that is quite hard to capture,so you should give yourself a pat on the back!.
    The first time I got a shot of it,was actually by accident.It is definitly a neb that needs a longer exposure,which is bad news if you live near light polluted skies.
    Good job!

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