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NGC 6960 - Firebird

 

NGC 6960

 

In the image above, north is to the right and east is up.

The Veil Nebula is a large supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. The supernova which created the nebula occured between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago, and the remnant has since expanded to cover an area of approx. 3 degrees. Estimations for its distance range from 1,400 to 2,600 light years. Only the western part is imaged here. It main part is framed by the 4th magnitude star 52 Cygni, the brightest part there was designated the number 6960 in the New General Catalogue. It features a filamentary structure which is visible in medium to large telescopes and on this photograph. Europeans sometimes call it "Firebird" as it resembles a wide-winged bird seen from the front, with the bright star being the body.

The nebulosity emits all of its light in isolated emission lines. The most prominent of those are the Hα, [OIII] and [SII] lines, which were exclusively recorded to obtain the image shown above. This is a "natural color" composition mixed so that the resulting colors are close to the visible spectrum of the human eye. The following mixture was used:

This mixture is proposed by J-P Metsavainio and Richard Crisp.

NGC 6960 and NGC 6974 - Firebird and Triangle, Wright-Newtonian photograph.

Exposure Data
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© 2011 Walter Koprolin