Starless Western Veil Nebula and Pickering's triangle in H-a (NGC6960, Sh-103) (Michele Vonci)

Starless Western Veil Nebula and Pickering's triangle in H-a (NGC6960, Sh-103)

Last night it was supposed to be clear... unsurprisingly it was instead rather cloudy! I managed however to make good use of the few openings in the cloud coverage and collected 11x300s (55 minutes) of Hydrogen-alpha data. The object in the picture is a detail of the Cygnus Loop (Sharpless 103), a large emission nebula resulting from the explosion of a supernova in the Cygnus Constellation ca. 1800 light-years away. The whole Loop spans 3 degrees and won't fit my telescope's field of view. Given its size, many of the visible subcomponents have been named over time. The object at the top of my picture is called by many names (Western Veil or Witch's Broom Nebula - NGC6960) whereas the triangular region at the right edge of the image is called Pickering's triangle. The Loop would be completed by the Eastern Veil nebula, which is missing in my picture. Hope you like it!

Cloudy Nights
Imagers of Italy

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