Veil Nebula with WFPC2 inset
Date: 01 July 2007
Satellite: Hubble Space Telescope
Depicts: NGC 6960 (Witch's Broom Nebula), western end of the Veil Nebula
Copyright: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and the Digitized Sky Survey 2
Acknowledgment: J. Hester (Arizona State University) and Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)
This image shows the west end of the Veil Nebula known as the Witch's Broom Nebula or NGC 6960. The central bright star is 52 Cygni. The highlighted portion is an image taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (see related images).
The colour in the WFPC2 image is produced by composite of three different images taken at three different wavelengths using narrow filters centred at 502 nm ([O III]), 656 nm (Hα) and 673 nm ([S II]). The different colours indicate emission from the different kinds of atoms excited by the shock: blue shows oxygen, green shows sulphur, and red shows hydrogen.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
