WESTERN VEIL NEBULA

A part of the Veil nebula complex from Cygnus. This is Pickering’s triangle and Witch’s broom (NGC6960). This supernova remnant glows in Halpha and Oiii frequencies which is perfect for LeXtreme narrowband filter that selects those frequencies. I have tried this image several times before but this 4 hour exposure is the best so far. There is so much detail and color of the nebula that I couldn’t capture before.

Interestingly, the bright star near Witch’s broom, 52 Cygni is at 290 light years while the veil nebula is at almost 8 times that distance at 2400 light years. This supernova happened between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. Anyone looking at the sky at that time probably saw a star much brighter than Venus.

WO ZS61 - ZWO ASI533MC-PRO - LeXtreme - 80 x 3 min - SIRIL - PS

ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA - OCT 2022

Another attempt at capturing Elephant trunk nebula (IC1396) in Cepheus. This large cloud of gas and dust is a star forming region with many 'young' (~100,000 years old) stars. Use of Nikon Z6 camera with the full frame sensor instead of the cropped sensor ASI533MC-pro astro camera, makes it a wider angle image. For comparison, here is a photo of the same object taken with the ASI camera two months ago.

WO ZS61 - Nikon Z6 - L-eXtreme - 47x5min - SIRIL - PS