Eastern and Western Veil

[FenlandPaul]

It’s been months since I last had the dob out; we seem to have had a very murky September so far and work commitments during June and July meant that very late nights weren’t particularly achievable.  But finally last night I seemed to have a window of opportunity, so out it came.  Whilst clear, the sky wasn’t especially transparent and the Milky Way – usually fairly distinct from my location – seemed subdued.  But still, it wasn’t thundering!!

On holiday in France in August, from a beautifully dark site, I’d had a whale of a time with my 70ED around the Sagittarius and Scorpius and also up in Cygnus.  In fact, I bagged the Veil for the first time ever.  That’s something I’m a little ashamed of – I’ve been observing on and off for 25 years but somehow the Veil had always escaped.  Maybe it was a lack of filters until recently, maybe it was looking through it in the past or looking for it in less than ideal skies.  But I was determined to see it on holiday and it didn’t disappoint – both sections clearly seen in the 31mm Nagler’s gigantic field.  I couldn’t wait to come home and explore it with the dob.  And last night I got that opportunity.

As everyone does, I located it via 52 Cygni using the Telrad and the 31N with a Castell OIII filter.  I then tried to see if I would have been able to locate it without the OIII filter: the western complex was a faint wavy wisp to the north of 52, while the eastern complex was a less faint, thicker sweeping arc about 1 degree long.  There was a distinct smudginess to 52 Cygni.  It’s quite likely I would have overlooked them in these conditions without the filter.  The TFOV with the 31N in this scope is 1.67 degrees, so the two components had to be observed separately although sweeping between them was effortless.

With the OIII filter and 31N, the western complex jumps out as a lazily-drawn capital S, slicing through 52 Cygni.  It’s slimmer but brighter to the north, where it ends almost in a point, and it’s more diffuse but thicker to the south before bifurcating as it sweeps to the south-east and dissipates into the background.   The whole western complex has the appearance of backlit smoke rising from a chimney on a still day, just slightly disrupted by an almost imperceptible breeze.

The eastern complex in the 31N with OIII filter is much brighter, curving fully 1.5 degrees and thicker than its western counterpart.  The brightest patch is about a third of the way down from the north, to the south of which is a fainter gap before brightening into the heavily structured southern half that flicks back to the west like the end of a spit on the shoreline.  In fact, the spit appears to terminate with two jagged teeth pointing westwards.

Structure would come and go between the eastern and western components, but particularly towards the western side and towards the north, near an arc of stars that backs onto Pickering’s Triangle.  I was reasonably convinced I could detect NGC 6974/9 at the end of that arc of stars too.  In the western complex, NGC 6992, NGC 6995 and IC1340 were all clearly visible although naturally they merged into a single curve.

With the 9mm Nagler, giving x169, I believe I could make out Pickering’s Triangle, just to the west of the brightest star in the arc between 52 Cygni and NGC 6974/9.  It became less obvious in the 31N, but that might have been simply due to its relatively small size.

Occasionally I swapped the OIII for my Skywatcher UHC filter, but the view always had better contrast and more detail with the OIII, although naturally the UHC gave a much enhanced view compared to the unfiltered view.

In all I spent a very satisfying hour observing and teasing out detail from the Veil.  What was encouraging was that so much was visible even in suboptimal conditions, and I’m looking forward to looking again in better conditions and from a darker site.

Thanks for reading.

Paul

[Piero]

Interesting report, Paul!  And glad to hear that you spent a nice time with your dob after months! 

I was also out last night, looking at the Veil and other targets. The Veil was really beautiful in my opinion, particularly the two "hooks" at the bottom of the Eastern Veil. 

[Special K]

So we were all looking around the Veil last night!!!  Very nice report and I dare say you spent much more time on it than I did. But not seeing it after 25 years observing must have felt great!