This is my image of the Eastern Veil Nebula, cataloged as NGC 6992, and located 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It is surely one of the most spectacular sights in our summer night sky. Like all nebulae, it is a cloud of ionized gas and dust, however this one is very special since it is the remains of a supernova that occurred around 8,000 years ago. The star that exploded was 20 times more massive than our own Sun. And the Eastern Veil is just one part of a whole ring of nebulae that constitute the entire supernova remnant spanning an area 6 times the diameter of the full moon. This ring continues to expand outwards at a rate of about 1.5 million kilometers per hour. The delicate nebular filaments get their amazing colors from ionized oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen, and hydrogen.

Did you know that we would not exist without supernovas? Except for hydrogen and some helium created in the Big Bang, all of the other elements are generated in stars through sustained fusion and then scattered across the galaxies in supernova explosions. The most common elements, like carbon and nitrogen, are created in the cores of most stars, fused from lighter elements like hydrogen and helium. The heaviest elements, like iron, however, are only formed in the massive stars which end their lives in supernova explosions. Still other elements are born in the extreme conditions of the explosion itself. As with the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, and the iron in our blood, elements coalesced into the dust of Earth from which God made us (Genesis 2:7). Hence, Carl Sagan's famous quote "We are star stuff." Or more elegantly, as Joni Mitchell wrote, "We are stardust, we are golden."

I made this image from thirty 300-second exposures shot at 1630mm focal length, calibrated with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames. I again used my Baader dual-bandpass filter (Hα and OIII) to make the reds and blues stand out in nice contrast. I stacked the frames with Astro Pixel Processor and post-processed with StarNet++, Photoshop, and DeNoise AI. And I look forward to imaging other parts of the Veil in the future, including Pickering's Triangle and The Witch's Broom.