CCD Sky Observatory
Images by Christopher Cappelli
NGC 6960 is a remnant of a supernova that exploded more than 5,000 years ago. It's located approximately 1,400 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It is commonly known by a few names: the Veil Nebula, the Western Veil Nebula, and the Witch's Broom Nebula.
The data for this image was acquired on September 18th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 25th, 2008 at the CCD Sky Observatory in Redlands, California, USA. The final image seen here represents the combination of 10 hours of exposures (18 x 20-minute Ha (3nm) exposures and 12 x 20-minute OIII (3nm) exposures) taken with a Takahashi FSQ-106ED telescope and a QSI 532wsi camera cooled to -10° C.
The two sets of sub-exposures (Ha and OIII) were processed using CCDStack and Photoshop CS. The images were calibrated, registered, normalized, Poisson sigma reject and combined in CCDStack. The two resulting images (Ha and OIII) were then brought into Photoshop for final processing. Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for Photoshop were used for local contrast enhancement, and to synthesize a green channel from the red channel (Ha) and the blue channel (OIII). Some additional processing was also done in Photoshop to balance the color and contrast of the image.
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