Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  IC 1340  ·  NGC 6960  ·  NGC 6979  ·  NGC 6992  ·  NGC 6995  ·  The star 52 Cyg  ·  Veil Nebula
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Cygnus Loop (2-panel mosaic), Scott Denning
Cygnus Loop (2-panel mosaic)
Powered byPixInsight

Cygnus Loop (2-panel mosaic)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Cygnus Loop (2-panel mosaic), Scott Denning
Cygnus Loop (2-panel mosaic)
Powered byPixInsight

Cygnus Loop (2-panel mosaic)

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Cygnus Loop Late September 2022The Cygnus Loop is a huge supernova remnant in the west wing of Cygnus the Swan. It’s almost 3 degrees across (6x the diameter of the full Moon!) and located about 2400 light years away. The parent star exploded around 20,000 years ago and the resulting loop of expanding shockwave is about 120 light years across. Hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue) is ionized by the passing shockwaves and fluoresces, making the loop visible. It’s also quite bright in soft X-rays. The loop appearance is an illusion of seeing a nearly perfect sphere in cross-section, illuminated by the areas through which we see the most depth. There is a “blowout along the southern margin that is spilling shocked plasma into interstellar space.Shot over several nights in my back yard through thee Borg 125 mm refractor with a full-frame one-shot color CMOS camera (ASI 094) and a dual-broadband filter (IDAS NBZ) that isolates the light of hydrogen and oxygen ions.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Cygnus Loop (2-panel mosaic), Scott Denning