Thursday, January 4, 2007

NGC 6960: The Witch's Broom Nebula


Credit & Copyright: T. A. Rector (U. Alaska), WIYN, NOAO, AURA, NSF

Explanation: Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula. Pictured above is the west end of the Veil Nebula known technically as NGC 6960 but less formally as the Witch's Broom Nebula. The rampaging gas gains its colors by impacting and exciting existing nearby gas. The supernova remnant lies about 1400 light-years away towards the constellation of Cygnus. This Witch's Broom actually spans over three times the angular size of the full Moon. The bright star 52 Cygnus is visible with the unaided eye from a dark location but unrelated to the ancient supernova.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yikes! Kinda looks like one of those shadows in the old Babylon 5 SciFi series....

Eyes said...

Never saw that series:>( Sounds good though:>)

Brooke said...

Another beauty!

YOU'VE NEVER SEEN B5?!?

American Crusader said...

What did the "Unifying Theory of Everything" have to say about this phenomenon?

Eyes said...

Hi Brooke, Nope... Sounds like I missed a good one though if they had cool stuff like this:>) Maybe I can get it on DVD. I love DVDs of TV series because you can skip the ads. I caught up on "24" this last year and watched S1 of "Prison Break".

Eyes said...

AC, ROTFLMAO!!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA! Yes, I'm sure the old Mo and the black rock had it all figured out,,, in their 148 pages.... HAAAAAAA HAAAAAAA HAAAAAA!!!!!

Eyes said...

WOW! Did you just see the meteor shower filmed over Denver? WOW!!!!

nanc said...

BEAUTIFUL!








my broom's in the shop for it's 3,000 mile oil and lube...

Eyes said...

LOL!!! You're too funny:>D

Anonymous said...

Okay, okay... so maybe it doesn't look like a Shadow.

Eyes said...

Ot looks like a "shadow's" web:>O

The Merry Widow said...

Good shot, FJ!
That was a good series, we used to watch B5 and Space, Above and Beyond. Got that one from Best Buy on DVD!

tmw

Eyes said...

Hmmmm, something to look into.

Anonymous said...

..."the shadow nose! e-r-r-r, knows!:

The Merry Widow said...

Egads! Radio!

tmw