This series of pictures covers the Veil Nebula, also known as the Cygnus Loop, a Supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus, that covers nearly 3 degrees in the sky (~6 times the diameter of the moon).  A supernova remnant (SNR) is the resultant stellar structure from the explosion of a star in a supernova.  The supernova remnant is bounded by an expanding shock wave, and consists of ejected material expanding from the explosion.  The source of the supernova was a star ~20 times more massive than our Sun, which exploded somewhere between 10,000 to 20,000 years about.  At the time, the supernova would have been brighter than Venus and visible in the daylight.  The nebula is expanding at a expanding at a velocity of 1.5 million km per hour.  The Veil Nebula has two other names - the Cirrus Nebula and the Filamentary Nebula, and has been measured to be at a distance of 2,400 light years from Earth.  Some parts of the nebula appear to be “rope-like” filaments.  The current explanation, is that these are thin shock waves, that are only visible when viewed edge-on, giving the appearance of a filament.  The Veil Nebula has an estimated diameter of 130 light years, and the thickness of the filaments are roughly 4 billion miles (approximately the distance from the Earth to Pluto).There are three photos in this series:  The Full Veil Nebula, the Western Veil Nebula, and the Eastern Veil Nebula.3rd Photo – Eastern Veil Nebula was shot on August 28th and 29th, 2022 – 44 300 second images for a total of 3 hours and 40 minutes.


The third photo covers the Eastern Veil Nebula (also known as Caldwell 33).  The brightest area is NGC6992 which transitions into the southern part (NGC6995) – Those two together form the “Network Nebula”.  IC1340 is called the Bat Nebula.


These pictures were shot with the IDAZ Dual Narrowband filter which is great for heavy light pollution areas (like mine), moonlight, and allows light transmission in two main frequency regions:1.     Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) (red) at 656.3 nm with a bandwidth of 15nm2.     Oxygen III (Oiii) (blue) at 500.7 nm with a bandwidth of 35nmThis image was processed in two color formats – One shot color (OSC) (which is dominated by the red spectrum). My setup:

• Mount: EQ6R-Pro
• Telescope: Williams Optics 81 mm Zenithstar doublet
• ZWO-ASI224MC color camera for guiding with the Zenithstar guide
• Hotech Corporation 2” Field Flattener
• ZWO ASI2600MC Pro; Camera cooled to -10 deg C, with ZWO Duo-Band Narrowband Light Pollution Reduction Filter
• Bortle-9 – South Los Angeles shot from my backyard
• Image Processing: Pixinsight – Using videos from multiple youtube teachers and website.  @Cosgrove’sCosmos (Thank you for your recent feedback in my image processing), @ViewintoSpace, @EnteringintoSpace, @Lukomatico – Lots of great on-line teachers/examples.
• Incorporated Russell Croman’s amazing products (Blur, Noise, and Star Xterminators)