Cygnus Loop - Blog Posts

“The shockwave from a 20,000 year-old supernova explosion in the constellation of Cygnus is still expanding into interstellar space. The collision of this fast moving wall of gas with a stationary cloud has heated it causing it to glow in visible as well as high energy radiation, producing the nebula known as the Cygnus Loop (NGC 6960/95). The nebula is located a mere 1,400 light-years away. The colors used here indicate emission from different kinds of atoms excited by the shock: oxygen-blue, sulfur-red, and hydrogen-green. This picture was taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope.”

Photo by J Hester of ASU, description via NASA.

A quick and (very) dirty mosaic of the H alpha photos I had already taken for the three major components of the Cygnus loop.

I wanted to have an idea of what a future mosaic of this target could look like (probably won't be able to do better than that before the end of the year or next summer unfortunately)

Thought I could post it here while I finish processing newer photos.