Portal:Astronomy/Picture/Week 31 2008

The Veil Nebula, also known as the Cygnus Loop or the Witch's Broom Nebula, is a large, relatively faint supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. The source supernova exploded some 5,000 to 8,000 years ago, and the remnants have since expanded to cover an area of 3 degrees. The nebula is notorious among astronomers for being difficult to see visually, even though it has a bright integrated magnitude of 7.

The image is combination of red and blue plates, part of DSS2 all sky survey completed on photographic plates in 1990s by Palomar observatory and Anglo-Australian Observatory and digitized by STScI in 2004. Full color versions of the survey are available in WikiSky since 2007, in WorldWide Telescope since 2008 and partially in Google Sky.