NGC 6960 - The Witches Broom Nebula
Date: July 23, 2020
Cosgrove’s Cosmos Catalog ➤#0041
NGC 6960 - The Witches Broom Nebula (click to enlarge)
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About the Target
Some time between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago - a star - twenty times more massive than our Sun, went supernova. The exploding outer layer of gas was blown off and has expanded in size ever since. This "ring" is known as the Cygnus Loop and is now over 3 degrees in diameter (6 times bigger than a full Moon!) and is located 2400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus the swan. Parts of this loop are brighter and have their own designations. NGC 6960 is one of those. It is also known as the Western Veil, The Finger of God, The Lacework Nebula, The Filamentary Nebula, and Caldwell 34. The bright star in the image is 52 Cygni. The colors are from the emission of Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Sulfur gas excited by stars.
Annotated Image
Annotated image of NGC 6960 was created with Pixinsight’s Imagesolver and AnotateImage scripts.
Location in the Sky
IAU/Sky & Telescope Constellation Chart of Cynus with the location of the NGC 6960 indicated by a yellow arrow.
About the Project
I am particularly happy with this image as this object was one of the first Astrophotos that I took almost one year ago - and I am pleased with the improvements from that first effort.
This image was shot on the evening of 7-23-20, resulting from 60x 120-second exposures.
Commentary from 7-28-21 when adding this project to the website
The only comment I would make here is that the younger version of myself used a bit of heavy hand on noise reduction. As a result, this image has a polished texture profile that I don’t find natural any longer. It’s still a nice image, but one that has been just hit too hard with noise reduction for my preferences now.
Previous Efforts
The first time I shot the Witches Broom was within two weeks of getting my first platform working. You can see the post HERE.
below are the images seen side-by-side:
NGC 6960 taken in August of 2019 (click to zoom)
The Current version (click to zoom)
More Info
Wikipedia: The Cygnus Loop
Capture Details
Lights
60 x 120 seconds
The total integration time is 2 .0 hours
Cal Frames
50 x 2 second Bias exposures
25 x 120 second Dark exposures
50 Flats
Capture Hardware
Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO
Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Camera Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon
Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2
Mount: Ioptron CEM60Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras
Software
Capture Software: Control: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop, Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, and much swearing…..
During the Summer of 2020, whilst stuck at home because of Covid I became very in improving the automation of the platform and achieving a more precise framing of the shots I made…