Triple APOD - June 26, 2024: Veil Nebula In 5 Minutes by Gabe Sewell
The Veil Nebula is one of the best known supernova remnants in the night sky. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun which exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. At the time of the explosion, the supernova would have appeared brighter than Venus in the sky, and visible in the daytime. At an estimated distance of 2400 light-years, the nebula has a diameter of 130 light-years. The thickness of each filament is roughly 1/50,000th of the radius, or about 4 billion miles, approximately the distance from Earth to Pluto. Undulations in the surface of the shell lead to multiple filamentary images only being visible when seen edge on, giving the appearance of a delicate lattice of nebulosity. Due to its diffuse nature, the Veil Nebula is a notoriously difficult object to photograph, and even more so to see visually.
Despite that, today's image is a single 300 second exposure from just outside Yellowstone National Park. The incredibly dark sky and great light gathering power of the unusual lens used meant that even this single sub on this relatively dim target still reveals a surprising amount of detail. This image also shows a feature that often gets removed from images of the veil nebula along with light pollution gradients, and that’s the reddish orange milky way dust to the east of the veil nebula complex. Effort was put into keeping this image as colour accurate as possible; the background dust should be an orange-brown, the blue parts of the nebula should be a teal colour from the Oxygen-iii emission lines at 495nm and 500nm, and the rest of the nebula should look a reddish magenta, where the main red Hydrogen alpha line at 656nm combines with the secondary blue emission of Hydrogen Beta at 486nm.
Equipment Used:
- Nikon D610 (astromodified)
- Nikon 400mm f/2.8 G ED VR
- iOptron CEM25p
- Lacerta MGENii standalone autoguider
1x 300s exposure at f/2.8, ISO 400