THE VEIL NEBULA - WESTERN PORTION (NGC 6960)

The Veil is a beautiful remnant of an ancient supernova.  It is far too large to capture in a single field with most telescope systems.  The entire Veil Nebula is sometimes called "The Cygnus Loop".

These images show the Western region of the Veil.  This region is also known as "The Witch's Broom".

My most recent attempt at imaging the Western Veil was taken with a Takahashi Epsilon 180ED at f/2.8, on an AP1200 mount, with an ST-10XME and AstroDon G2 narrowband filters.  8 hours total for each color (48x10 min subframes), mapped with the CFHT scheme (Ha=Red, OIII=Green, SII=Blue).  Taken in my backyard in October, 2008.

(CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGHEST RESOLUTION):
 

Below is a narrowband composite taken 6/24/07 from a dark site in Southern Arizona, using a Williams Optics 105mm refractor at f/5.6, CGE Mount, ST-10XME with AstroDon filters.  9x10 min each for Ha, OIII, and SII.  This image is an "experimental" color mapping in which I first created the Hubble Palette and CFHT Palette results separately, and then combined them; this seemed to bring out some additional differences in the detail.

(click on images for larger size):

Here is the Hubble Palette result, which maps as SII=Red, Ha=Green, and OIII=Blue:

And here is the CFHT Palette result, which maps Ha=Red, OIII=Green, and SII=Blue:

Here is another version of the same field, taken in narrowband from my Tucson backyard with a similar setup on 7/8/06:

And finally, here is a quick image created with the 7/8/06 data by my astronomy observing buddy Alfredo Garcia: