Caldwell 33 (C33) - The Eastern Veil Nebula is a site to see! Part of a large nebula complex. Heated ionized gas and dust are based in the Cygnus Loop, a large Supernova Remnant (SNR) based in the constellation Cygnus.
The star-forming SNR was approximately twenty times the size of the sun which exploded 10-20000 years ago (Weil et al., 2019). the supernova at the time would have been viewable during the day but has since expanded to cover 3 degrees of the sky.
This nebula comprised of Hydrogen, Oxygen and sulphur makes the target a good choice for Astrophotography (AP) with dual and tri-band Filters (Narrowband filters)
Multiple catalogue names are designated for different parts of this large nebula
C33 - NGC 6992 - Eastern Veil Nebula
C34 - NGC 6960 - Western Veil Nebula
NGC - 6979 - Pickerings Triangle
The star-forming SNR was approximately twenty times the size of the sun which exploded 10-20000 years ago (Weil et al., 2019). the supernova at the time would have been viewable during the day but has since expanded to cover 3 degrees of the sky.
This nebula comprised of Hydrogen, Oxygen and sulphur makes the target a good choice for Astrophotography (AP) with dual and tri-band Filters (Narrowband filters)
Multiple catalogue names are designated for different parts of this large nebula
C33 - NGC 6992 - Eastern Veil Nebula
C34 - NGC 6960 - Western Veil Nebula
NGC - 6979 - Pickerings Triangle
The pictures above were taken on a 65% moon (luckily the moon was on the opposite side of the sky)
These pictures were taken with a One-Shot Colour Dedicated Astrophotography Camera (OSC) with my Skywatcher 72ed telescope from a Bortal 4 location with a Dual Band filter over several nights during April 2022. You will need accurate guiding for the long exposures on-site target, depending on your location/ Bortal scale varying exposure lengths can be used, but if you are going to use a narrowband filter a minimum exposure time of 5 minutes is recommended.
The Pictures above were 10min (600sec) exposure lengths with a total of 8 hours of stacked images to create this image (and a 4-hour version sat next to it for comparison) if you live in a Bortal 6 area I'd suggest a 5 min exposure time.
These pictures were taken with a One-Shot Colour Dedicated Astrophotography Camera (OSC) with my Skywatcher 72ed telescope from a Bortal 4 location with a Dual Band filter over several nights during April 2022. You will need accurate guiding for the long exposures on-site target, depending on your location/ Bortal scale varying exposure lengths can be used, but if you are going to use a narrowband filter a minimum exposure time of 5 minutes is recommended.
The Pictures above were 10min (600sec) exposure lengths with a total of 8 hours of stacked images to create this image (and a 4-hour version sat next to it for comparison) if you live in a Bortal 6 area I'd suggest a 5 min exposure time.
The Veil nebula was first discovered by William Herschel in 1784 describing it as "branching nebulosity, The following part divides into several streams uniting again towards the South"
The nebula can be described as rope-like filaments which can only be viewed edge-on. (Fesen et al., 1982). The nebula can be classified as bright (Mag7) but due to its distance and spread over a large area, its brightness is low and difficult to see without the aid of filters. OIII filter will bring out the details with a large telescope (~8 inches or more). But doing AP on this target smaller telescopes are needed to get a large section of this nebula in or a Mosaic style picture to get all the SNR in the frame which can be seen low in the post.
The nebula can be described as rope-like filaments which can only be viewed edge-on. (Fesen et al., 1982). The nebula can be classified as bright (Mag7) but due to its distance and spread over a large area, its brightness is low and difficult to see without the aid of filters. OIII filter will bring out the details with a large telescope (~8 inches or more). But doing AP on this target smaller telescopes are needed to get a large section of this nebula in or a Mosaic style picture to get all the SNR in the frame which can be seen low in the post.
Veil Nebula using a 50mm skywatcher evoguide scope and ZWO Asi 533mc Pro using Stellarium.
Zotti, G., Hoffmann, S. M., Wolf, A., Chéreau, F., & Chéreau, G. (2021). The Simulated Sky: Stellarium for Cultural Astronomy Research. Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, 6(2), 221–258. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsa.17822
To Fit the whole nebula into the frame a small scope would be needed with either a dedicated AP camera or a full-frame DSLR (with the DSLR you could get away with a slightly larger scope). You can always a mosaic style for this target, but depending on your setup it may require a lot of panels to fit it all in. My setup will get about 90% of it all in three frames with some cropping in the top and bottom corners. I have tried this as a mosaic style picture which you can see below. It turns out much better than I expected (especially for 4 hours per panel)
The best time to see this target is July through to late October, but you can view it in the early hours of the morning from April. It is recommended to try it when it is in the night sky for a full meridian and long night hours. The pictures above were taken from 12:30 am to 4-4:30 am in April (I was a tad excited about this target - I did not want to wait!)
This target is one of my favourite Nebulas due to the colour and filament appearance and I encourage you to attempt this target! Remember, the photos are the easy part - they contain the detail, but the processing of the data is where the challenge is.
The setup
Scope - Skywatcher 72ed
Mount - Skywatcher eq5 goto
Guide scope – ZWO 30mm
Guide Camera – ZWO Asi 120mm mini
Control box – ZWO ASIAIR Pro
Filter – Optolong L-eXtreme 1.25mm
Filter drawer next to the camera sensor
Fox Halo 96k power bank
Dew heaters with their own power banks on both guide scope and camera
All the data was stacked with DeepSkyStacker and Processed in Pixinsight. (Other software is available which is free and will is linked in the information tab)
Above two pictures were taken recently in early May 2022 and is a mosaic style pictures made up of two frames. Both frames are made up of 4 hours with each exposure time at 600 seconds per frame. Below is a close-up view of the witch's broom - The Western Veil Nebula.
With the new RASA 8 telescope, I have taken part in the Veil Nebula again to test the capabilities of the scope, especially at lower exposure times.
Instead of ten-minute exposures, this exposure time was only 90 sec per exposure and a total of 1 hour and 50 minutes of exposure.
Instead of ten-minute exposures, this exposure time was only 90 sec per exposure and a total of 1 hour and 50 minutes of exposure.
The equipment used on the night was the following.
No Dew heaters were used during the night exposures. The summer period is generally good for (or lack of in this case) dew.
The fact it doesn't need longer than a few minutes exposures instead of 10 minutes removes the need for serious tracking (although I still use tracking - mainly for dithering) and the scores of the pictures when stacking are far superior to the previous SW 72ed, which was 1-2k compared to 9-10k with the RASA 8.
- Scope – Celestron RASA 8
- Mount - Skywatcher EQ6 R Pro
- Guide scope – ZWO 30mm
- Guide Camera – ZWO ASI 120mm mini
- Main Camera – ZWO Asi 533mc Pro
- Control box – ZWO ASIAIR Pro
- Filter – IDAS NBZ Nebula Booster
- Starizona Filter drawer next to the camera sensor
- Fox Halo 96k power bank
No Dew heaters were used during the night exposures. The summer period is generally good for (or lack of in this case) dew.
The fact it doesn't need longer than a few minutes exposures instead of 10 minutes removes the need for serious tracking (although I still use tracking - mainly for dithering) and the scores of the pictures when stacking are far superior to the previous SW 72ed, which was 1-2k compared to 9-10k with the RASA 8.