NGC6992 (Eastern Veil Nebula)

Last updated on 4 Sep 2022 2 min read
NGC6992 The Eastern Veil Nebula (also known as Caldwel 33)

The NGC6992 aka The Eastern Veil Nebula. Early September 2021.

Object

NGC 6992 is a very beautiful supernova remnant located in ca. 2400 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The oxygen, sulfur, and hydrogen composition of this nebula creates the stunning flame-like structure.

The estimated age of the remnant is 1–2 × 10^4 yr. At the time of explosion of the source massive star, the supernova could have been visible in daytime! The remnants have since expanded to an area of 65 ly in radius. The object thus covers a huge area of the night sky (apparent diameter is ~3 degrees). That about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. The structure is so large that several NGC numbers were assigned to brightest parts of the nebula:

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‘The Cygnus Loop’ reproduction by Robert A Fesen et al. 2018

Color palette

I used H-O for R-B mapping with Ha, OIII filter data (here no sulfur-II data). On this image, ou can see hydrogen as orange/yellow and oxygen as blue.

Location

Home observatory-on-balcony in Cottbus, Germany.

For nerds

  • Light pollution: with SQM of 19.89 mag./arc sec2 center of Cottbus is around Bortle 5 sky.
  • Imaging optics: William Optics ZenithStar 80mm f/6.8 ED Refractor and WO Flat6AIII (0.8x)
  • Mount: SW HEQ5 PRO
  • Camera: ZWO ASI-294MM
  • Filters: ZWO Ha, OIII, SII (7nm)
  • Guiding: WO 50mm f/4 Guide Scope and ASI120MM-Mini
  • Other tech: ZWO EFW, ZWO EAF
  • Imaging @ Gain: 120 | Cooling: -10C | Bin1 (8288*5644px)
  • Integration: ca. 3.5 hours; 300" exposures per image all filters.
  • Software: PixInsight, Stellarium