Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)
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Pickerings, Darius Kopriva
Pickerings
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Pickerings

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Pickerings, Darius Kopriva
Pickerings
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Pickerings

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Description

"Pickering's Triangle" is the name for the portion of the Veil Nebula in the Constellation of Cygnus that is included in the Kopernik image above. It is much fainter than the two main loops that form this supernova remnant. It has no NGC number (though NGC 6979 is occasionally used to refer to it). It was discovered photographically in 1904 by Williamina Fleming (after the New General Catalogue was published), but credit went to Edward Charles Pickering, the director of her observatory, as was the custom of the day.

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 explosion, the supernova would have appeared brighter than Venus in the sky, and visible in 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. (The distance estimates affect also the estimates of size and age.)

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Pickerings, Darius Kopriva

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Southern Hemisphere Astro