NGC6960 - Western Veil Nebula - Witches Broom

 

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;

NGC 6960 is a part of a supernova remnant that is the shattered remains of one, and possibly two, supernovae that exploded more than 15,000 years ago at a distance of 2,500 light-years from Earth. At the time of the explosion it would have been seen as a very bright star rivaling the crescent Moon. The bright star near the center of the image, known as 52 Cygni, is much closer to earth (206 light years) and is not associated with the Veil Nebula.
Parts of the nebula appear to be rope-like filaments. This is because the shock waves expanding from the supernova explosion are so thin that the shell is visible only when viewed exactly edge-on, giving the shell the appearance of filaments. Undulations in the surface of the shell lead to multiple filamentary images, which appear to be intertwined.

This images was take at the 2017 Okie-Tex Star Party near Kenton, OK.  The image was taken with a Astro-Tech AT6-RC with an Orion Star Shoot Pro II camera mounted on a Celestron CI-700 mount.  The image is made up of 22 ten minute sub-frames stacked.  Calibration and Stacking were preformed in Nebulosity V4 and final processing was done in Photoshop CS5.  Each image was taken using auto-guiding with an 80mm refractor using an Meade DSI Pro camera and PHD2 v2.6.4dev2.