The Cygnus Loop

Better known as the Veil Nebula: the Eastern and Western Veils together

Published

January 15, 2026

Summer sky · Supernova remnant · Cygnus, the Swan

The full Cygnus Loop supernova remnant: red and blue filaments forming a broken ring against a dense star field — Imaged summer 2025, processed January 2026.

Distance

~2,400 light-years

Size

~120 light-years

Exploded

~20,000 years ago

In our sky

6 full Moons wide

Best months

July – October

The story

What better way to spend a bitter cold January (for me, anyway) than processing my backlog of summer images?

This is the Cygnus Loop, better known as the Veil Nebula. It’s a very large supernova remnant in the constellation (…you must have guessed…) Cygnus, the Swan. When a star explodes in a supernova, it blasts its outer layers into space, so that we can take these awesome images.

We (referring to better minds than mine) think the star exploded about 20,000 years ago, roughly 2,400 light-years away. That’s about 14 quadrillion miles. The ever-expanding shell of gas and star dust is now about 120 light-years across, or about 705 trillion miles. Whew. From here on spaceship Earth it looks quite a bit smaller, but it still stretches across about six full Moons of sky.

The remnant is so large and bright that its different sections have their own names. My favorite is the Western Veil, the Witch’s Broom.

Look closely

Can you see the witch star riding on top of the wispy broom?

The named parts

Detail of the bright curved Eastern Veil — Eastern Veil

The whole loop, framed tightly — The whole loop

Detail of the Western Veil, the Witch's Broom — Western Veil, the Witch’s Broom

How this image grew

The Western Veil, imaged in 2023 — August 2023: my first try, just the Western Veil

The Western Veil from the current image — Today: the same area, cropped from the whole loop

My first try at this target was just the Western Veil, in August 2023, with my Celestron C8. Its longer focal length gives more magnification and some nice detail. However, my processing skills needed improvement: zoomed in, there are large halos around the stars. Today’s version is a crop from a much wider view, so it trades some close-up detail for the whole loop, with cleaner stars and truer color.

Next time

I would reprocess this using some of my newer Pixinsight skills and perhaps try and blue and gold version.

How I made it

For the astro crowd

Telescope	Askar FRA400 with f/3.9 reducer
Camera	ZWO ASI2600MM Pro (mono)
Filters	Antlia RGB, plus Hα, SII and OIII (3 nm)
Total time	18 h 30 m
Where	New Jersey · Bortle 5
Software	PixInsight + Affinity Photo 2