Image 1: Eastern Veil Nebula, observed at Lac Teeples on September 25, 2023
The Veil Nebula is one of the most amazing objects in the night sky, its bright colours reflecting the massive amounts of explosive energy that created it, ten or twenty thousand years ago. It is a remnant of a supernova, a massive star explosion that burned extraordinarily brightly. It would have appeared brighter than Venus to any Earthlings around at that time
As a visual target for astronomers it is difficult because the light is spread out over a fairly large area. With a camera it is relatively easy to capture.
The complete supernova remnant is in a couple separate objects as seen from Earth. The Eastern Veil Nebula is just as spectacular as the Western side, but I have tended to spend a lot more time looking at the Western end because it is a bit bigger. The field of view of my latest camera/telescope combination is just not quite big enough to see all of the Veil.
The Veil has very fine filamentary structure, perhaps moreso than any other object in deep space observable by amateurs. See Image 2, a crop of Image 1, for details.
Image 2: Eastern Veil Nebula, observed at Lac Teeples on September 25, 2023. Crop of Image 1.
Wikipedia has an interesting image of this object, photographed at the Yerkes Observatory in 1901 by George Willis Ritchey (see Image 3). This image took 3 hours to capture using a two-foot reflector, probably one of the world’s best telescopes at that time. It appears that my images are "flipped" (if Ritchey's are not).
Image 3: Eastern Veil Nebula, Yerkes Observatory, by George Willis Ritchey 1901. From Wikipedia.
Postscript: There is interesting information on Wikipedia about the 24" telescope used in 1901 to capture Image 3.
Image of the Eastern Veil Nebula captured September 25, 2023 at Lac Teeples. Telescope RASA-11, Camera ZWO ASI-6200MC. RGB one-shot colour, no filters. Uncertain how much data… perhaps one hour only.
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