Western Veil Nebula - NGC6960

About this image

The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus.[4] It constitutes the brightest parts of the visible portion of the Cygnus Loop,[5] a supernova remnant, many portions of which have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun which exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.[2] At the time of the explosion, the supernova would have appeared brighter than Venus in the sky, and visible in the daytime.[6] The remnants have since expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, and 36 times the area, of the full Moon).[4] While previous distance estimates have ranged from 1,200 to 5,800 light-years, a 2018 determination of 2,400 light-years is based on direct astrometric measurements.[2] (The distance estimates affect also the estimates of size and age.)