NGC 6960: The Western Veil Nebula...

NGC 6960 in HOO

Object: NGC 6960 
Type: Supernova remnant
Constellation: Cygnus
Distance: 1,470 light years
Date: September 23rd. 2020
Equipment: ATIK 460EX with EFW2, Skywatcher f5.5 Esprit 100 ED refractor, Avalon Linear mount, guiding with Lodestar X2/PHD
Subframes: 10 x 300s Ha, 10 x 300s OIII, no flats, no darks (hot pixel removal in Astroart).

Stellarium map showing location of field of view

Tucked under the eastern wing of Cygnus, NGC 6960 (also nicknamed the “Witches’ Broom”) is a remnant of a supernova that is believed to have occurred approximately   8,000 years ago.  It is part of a larger nebula covering nearly 3 degrees of sky, and which includes the Eastern Veil nebula NGC 6992-5.  The link to my earlier image of the other half of this nebula gives more information about the object.

The image above is an HOO composite. Both seeing and transparency were not good during the evening of September 21st. and the resultant sub-frames were rather noisy, a sure sign of high altitude haze. I was also too lazy to take more or longer ones, although I may revisit this object in the near future. After grappling with a series of objects with very weak OIII signal, at least that of NGC 6960 is reasonably strong and facilitates image processing.