I wanted to create an image for Halloween, so I chose a target with a suitable name, the Witch’s Broom Nebula also known as Western Veil or NGC6960. It is a remnant from a supernova which occurred about 10,000 years ago. The ‘veil’ effect is thought to be from gasses encountering interstellar debris, but from our angle of view, we are seeing the side of these gas clouds, from the very thin edge. The darker areas are not empty space, they are dark dust that is blocking out other light sources. A shockwave swept away dust in the areas where we are able to see background stars shine through.
In this image, I actually removed the stars (all but the bright center star, Cygni) to get a better view of the veil itself, a graceful sweeping arc.
This was a particularly difficult image to capture with my telescope. It took many attempts with failures. My scope will not track anything above 85° altitude, and by the time it was dark enough to begin tracking, it had already risen above that mark. I persisted, knowing the final image would be worth the trouble.
After stacking over 300 10-second exposures in a mosaic manner using Siril, I did some final post-processing… and look at what eventually became visible… THE WITCH riding the broom!!! I hope you take this with the light-hearted Halloween fun I had intended. The actual final image is below.
Happy Halloween!
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