Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - 4

SPECTRUM by Peter Tyson
Behind the Veil
FOR SOMETHING THAT'S ESSENTIALLY NOTHING, the Veil Nebula
has a bit of everything. This wispy expanse of gas and dust in Cygnus
satisfies astronomers on so many levels that many bend over
backward in their praise. Veteran observer (and S&T Contributing
Editor) Steve Gottlieb has deemed it, for those with dark skies
and the right equipment, " arguably the most spectacular telescopic object in
the northern sky. " Bob King, our Celestial Calendar author, has said the Veil
" rightly elicits nearly as many wows as Saturn or your favorite globular cluster. "
Why? For starters, it's breathtakingly beautiful, as our cover image shows.
That's just one tiny portion of the Veil Nebula, or the Cygnus Loop as it's also
known. To revel in the whole shebang, have a look at Howard Banich's article
on page 28. As you'll quickly realize flipping through his piece, the Veil offers
myriad sketching opportunities in the hands of a talented artist.
For those like Banich who have access to inkpHubble
image of filamentous
structure within the Veil Nebula
dark skies and big scopes, the Veil provides truly
exquisite richness of detail. One can explore its
intricacies as limitlessly as one might pore over,
say, a high-resolution satellite image of Earth.
Some of the Veil's ropelike strands even furnish a
3D effect. Yet you don't need a 28-inch telescope
like Banich's. The Veil is visible in small scopes
and even binoculars (see page 38).
To fully indulge in the Veil's labyrinthine
subtleties, we can turn to superb images that
astronomers have taken with the Hubble Space
Telescope and other observatory instruments. Captured at different wavelengths
- ultraviolet, infrared, and X-ray, among others - such pictures hint at the
physical processes sculpting this profoundly complex object.
The science behind the Veil is as mind-altering as its beauty. What we see are
the glowing results of shock waves from a supernova slamming into interstellar
dust and gas. When the progenitor star exploded perhaps 20,000 years ago,
alert Ice Age humans would have noticed a new star brighter than Venus overhead.
Since then, the speeding remnants have expanded so far that a photon
unleashed on one side of the Veil today would take 120 years to reach the other.
That ever-ballooning immensity, visible in its entirety through a wide-field
telescope eyepiece, reminds us of our own origins. As Carl Sagan so memorably
assured us, " We are made of star-stuff. " We wouldn't be here if it weren't for
collapsing stars seeding the cosmos with the elements that
comprise us and everything else of substance.
" No wonder we all love this object, " Banich concludes.
Next time you visit a dark-sky site, lift the veil for yourself.
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Sky & Telescope - September 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - September 2021