From Wikipedia: Pickering's Triangle is part of the large veil nebula complex in Cygnus. The veil nebula 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.=10.5px 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.
When finely resolved, as in this image, some parts of the nebula appear to be rope-like filaments. The standard explanation is that the shock waves are so thin, less than one part in 50,000 of the radius, that the shell is visible only when viewed exactly edge-on, giving the shell the appearance of a filament. At the estimated distance of 2400 light-years, the nebula has a radius of 65 light-years (a diameter of 130 light-years). The thickness of each filament is 1⁄50,000th of the radius, or about 4 billion miles, roughly the distance from Earth to Pluto. Undulations in the surface of the shell lead to multiple filamentary images, which appear to be intertwined.
This image was taken with my Meade 10" ACF SCT using an ASI6200MM-PRO camera and 3nm narrowband Ha, OIII, and SII filters.
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