NGC 6960 - The Witch's Broom (Cosgrove's Cosmos (Patrick Cosgrove))

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: 52 Cyg · NGC 6960 · The star 52Cyg · Veil Nebula

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NGC 6960 - The Witch's Broom

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NGC 6960 - The Witch's Broom

NGC 6960 - The Witch's Boom Nebula

Some time between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago - a star - twenty times more massive than our Sun, went supernova. The exploding outer layer of gas was blown off and has expanded in size ever since. This "ring" is known as the Cygnus Loop or the Veil nebula, and is now over 3 degrees in diameter (6 times bigger than a full Moon!) and is located 2400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus the swan. Parts of this loop are brighter and have their own designations. NGC 6960 is one of those. It is also known as the Western Veil, The Finger of God, The Lacework Nebula, The Filamentary Nebula, and Caldwell 34. The bright star in the image is 52 Cygni. The colors are from emission of Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sodium gas excited by stars.

I am particually happy with this image as this object was one of the first Astrophotos that I took almost one year ago - and I am pleased with the improvements from that first effort.

This image was shot on the evening of 7-23-20, resulting from 60x 120 second exposures.

Here are the image details:

60 x 120 seconds

50 x 2 second Bias exposures

25 x 120 second Dark exposures

50 Flats

Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO

Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm

Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2

Field Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon

Mount: Ioptron CEM60

Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3694984
PixInsight job	RVWGXV7QQ10267PO0JS4W268G1BUJHNT
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	20h46m15s.40
RA (top/left)	20h43m04s.24
RA (top/right)	20h46m42s.59
RA (bottom/right)	20h49m25s.90
RA (bottom/left)	20h45m47s.87

Dec (center)	+30°37′28″.3
Dec (top/left)	+30°48′04″.10
Dec (top/right)	+29°55′24″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+30°26′31″.3
Dec (bottom/left)	+31°19′29″.4

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NGC 6960 - The Witch's Broom

NGC 6960 - The Witch's Broom

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NGC 6960 - The Witch's Broom

NGC 6960 - The Witch's Broom

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