What about 4th of July streamers? The universe has those too! __________ The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus. It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a large but relatively faint supernova remnant. The source supernova exploded circa 3,000 BC to 6,000 BC, and the remnants have since expanded to cover an area roughly 36 times the area of the full moon. The distance to the nebula is not precisely known, but Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) data supports a distance of about 1,470 light-years. In modern usage, the names Veil Nebula, Cirrus Nebula, and Filamentary Nebula generally refer to all the visible structure of the remnant, or even to the entire loop itself. The structure is so large that several NGC numbers were assigned to various arcs of the nebula. There are three main visual components: * The Western Veil (also known as Caldwell 34), consisting of NGC 6960 (the "Witch's Broom", "Finger of God", or "Filamentary Nebula") near the foreground star 52 Cygni; * The Eastern Veil (also known as Caldwell 33), whose brightest area is NGC 6992, trailing off farther south into NGC 6995 (together with NGC 6992 also known as "Network Nebula") and IC 1340; and * Pickering's Triangle (or Pickering's Triangular Wisp), brightest at the north central edge of the loop, but visible in photographs continuing toward the central area of the loop. NGC 6974 and NGC 6979 are luminous knots in a fainter patch of nebulosity on the northern rim between NGC 6992 and Pickering's Triangle. __________ #FourthOfJuly #VeilNebula #TheWesternVeil #TheEasternVeil #PickeringsTriangle #Nebula #Cygnus #Universe #KuiperKatsAstronomy #AmateurAstronomy #CitizenScience #ScienceEducation #Astronomy #WomenInSTEM #WomenWhoScience
