This image is part of the Eastern Veil Nebula, or NGC 6992, and it was obtained using the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope. It is a three-colour composite made from data collected using filters to isolate the light emitted by hydrogen alpha (H-alpha), doubly ionised oxygen (OIII) and ionised sulfur (SII) atoms, and coded in the image as red, green and blue respectively. Credit: D. López (IAC). [ JPEG | TIFF | PDF (with text) ]

The Veil Nebula is part of the Cygnus Loop which comprises several NGC objects. Shown here is NGC 6992 in the Eastern Veil. The Veil Nebula is a faint supernova remnant that exploded some 5000 years ago, and since then it has been expanding on the sky to cover some 3 degrees. Its fine and intrincated filaments are attributed to a thin shock wave propagating into space and seen edge-on.

This image was obtained and processed by members of the IAC astrophotography group (A. Oscoz, D. López, P. Rodríguez-Gil and L. Chinarro).

More information:

• NGC 6992 - IAC Astrophoto September 2009
• IAC Astronomical Picture of the Month