Veil Nebula

The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus.

The thickness of each filament is 1⁄50,000th of the radius, or about 4 billion miles, roughly the distance from Earth to Pluto.

Undulations in the surface of the shell lead to multiple filamentary images, which appear to be intertwined.

An 8-inch (200 mm) telescope equipped with an O-III filter shows the delicate lacework apparent in photographs.

[citation needed] The brighter segments of the nebula have the New General Catalogue designations NGC 6960, 6974, 6979, 6992, and 6995.

It was discovered photographically in 1904 by Williamina Fleming (after the New General Catalogue was published), but credit went to Edward Charles Pickering, the director of her observatory, as was the custom of the day.

Using images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope between 1997 and 2015, the expansion of the Veil Nebula has been directly observed.

NASA photograph of the Cygnus Loop in ultraviolet light, with labels for well-known features. (25 November 2012)
George Willis Ritchey image of what he called the Great Nebula in Cygnus (In modern times the Veil Nebula); taken with the two-foot reflecting telescope with 3 hours exposure at the Yerkes Observatory in 1901.