The Witch's Broom Nebula (APOD 19 Aug 2008)
Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:28 pm
APOD and General Astronomy Discussion Forum
https://asterisk.apod.com/
She sweeps with many-colored Brooms --orin stepanek wrote:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080819.html
Quote: The expanding debris cloud gains it's colors
by sweeping up and exciting existing and nearby gas.
The wispy cloud is very intricate and colorful; I can see why it is called the veil nebula.
Without reading the explanation about the sweeping action on nearby gas; It would be hard to imagine the broom name.![]()
If you thought the broom was big, the whole of the Veil Nebula dwarfs that.orin stepanek wrote:Being 3 times the angular size of the moon would make it a nice naked eye visual if it were only bright enough.
I was sure of that! The Broom is part of the West end of the Veil.Case wrote:If you thought the broom was big, the whole of the Veil Nebula dwarfs that.orin stepanek wrote:Being 3 times the angular size of the moon would make it a nice naked eye visual if it were only bright enough.
Most of the names we have for objects like this stem from their visual appearance in the eyepiece- gray, faint fuzzies all of them. With modern imaging we see so much more detail, and it often becomes impossible in these images to figure out how the common name ever came about. The forest has been lost for the trees.orin stepanek wrote:The wispy cloud is very intricate and colorful; I can see why it is called the veil nebula. Without reading the explanation about the sweeping action on nearby gas; It would be hard to imagine the broom name.
My opthalmologist assures me that, if you live to be 100, the normal crystallization of the lens and degeneration of the maculae will bring about the return of the forest. Be patient.Chris Peterson wrote:With modern imaging we see so much more detail, ... The forest has been lost for the trees.
Perhaps one should step back a little:Chris Peterson wrote:Most of the names we have for objects like this stem from their visual appearance in the eyepiece- gray, faint fuzzies all of them. With modern imaging we see so much more detail, and it often becomes impossible in these images to figure out how the common name ever came about. The forest has been lost for the trees.orin stepanek wrote:The wispy cloud is very intricate and colorful; I can see why it is called the veil nebula. Without reading the explanation about the sweeping action on nearby gas; It would be hard to imagine the broom name.
A stunning new astronomical image of the "Witch's Broom" Nebula taken by Adam Block of The University of Arizona Mount Lemmon SkyCenter is today's "Astronomy Picture of the Day."
Block of the UA's Steward Observatory, who coordinates public programs in astronomy at the SkyCenter, used the SkyCenter's 24-inch telescope to produce the image.
The telescope is the same one that the public uses in SkyNights, the astronomy evenings that Block runs atop 9,157-foot Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson.
It is also the telescope that Block, an astrophotographer of renown, is using this week to teach a 3-day SkyCenter workshop called "Making Every Pixel Count." Block will share his expertise in producing spectacular images of deep sky objects with a dozen enrolled participants.
The Astronomical Picture of the Day Website, known as APOD, was founded in 1995 by two professional astronomers, Robert Nemiroff of Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich., and Jerry Bonnell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The team, who continue to write, coordinate and edit APOD, has by now assembled the largest collection of annotated astronomical images on the Internet.
Block used the SkyCenter's 24-inch RC Optical Systems telescope with an SBIG STL-11000 CCD camera and Custom Scientific filters to acquire the image on July 29.
"I took three hours of unfiltered data and combined it with 50 minutes of color data in each filter (red, green and blue), so the total exposure time was 5.5 hours," he said.
Nemiroff and Bonnell posted this explanation along with Block's image:
"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 here is the west end of the Veil Nebula, known technically as NGC 6960, but less formally as the Witch's Broom Nebula. The expanding debris cloud gains its colors by sweeping up 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 Cygnus is visible with the unaided eye from a dark location but is unrelated to the ancient supernova."
The UA's Mount Lemmon SkyCenter offers public observing opportunities, workshops and hands-on learning experiences in many sciences.