What Is The NGC 6992 Eastern Veil Nebula?
The NGC 6992 Eastern Veil Nebula (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, is a large supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. It consists of dust, heated and ionized gas: oxygen, sulfur, and hydrogen. The Eastern Veil Nebula is part of the Veil Nebula. The other parts are the Western Veil Nebula and Pickering’s Triangle. When finely resolved, some parts of the nebula appear to be rope-like filaments.
The nebula was discovered on 5 September 1784 by William Herschel.
The estimated distance of the nebula is 2400 light-years and it has a radius of 65 light-years (a diameter of 130 light-years).
Astrophotography
Many deep sky astrophotographers love to image the Eastern Veil Nebula just like the Western Veil Nebula and Pickering’s Triangle. When using a duo-narrowband filter, you can expect spectacular results and an image that is very pleasing to the eyes.
For the image above, the Eastern Veil Nebula in HOO (bicolor), I used the STC Astro Duo-Narrowband filter from STC Optical. This filter is designed to capture specific wavelengths of gaseous and planetary nebulae. It lets only through the Hα emission line at 656nm and OIII lines at 500nm, performing high transmissions and rejecting light pollution as well as the important blocking of longer wavelengths. It brings more detail and contrast to your image. Every time I use the STC Astro Duo-Narrowband, I’m blown away by the quality that this filter brings to the final result of my images. I can highly recommend this filter for narrowband imaging.
The camera I used was the ZWO ASI533MC Pro attached to my refractor from TS Optics, a TS86SDQ Quadruplet APO Petzval design.
Image details
- Telescope: TS Optics TS86SDQ Quadruplet APO Petzval design
- Mount: Sky-Watcher NEQ5 Synscan GoTo
- Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro
- Filter: STC Optical Astro Duo-Narrowband 2″
- Telescope control: ZWO ASIair v1
- Dew Heater: DEW NOT
- Software: Astro Pixel Processor (stacking) & PixInsight (processing)
Data captured in the following nights: 07/09-08/09/2021 & 08/09-09/09/2021 => Total integration time: 4.68 hours
No guiding
SQM-L (average): 19.21 -> Bortle class 6
