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Astrophotography by Bob Franke

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The Veil Nebula

X-Ray and Optical Narrowband Blend

 

demo
 
ROSAT Image Credit:

 		 Dr. Steven L. Snowden
Astrophysics Science Division
NASA/GSFC

 

The Roentgen Satellite, ROSAT, a Germany/US/UK collaboration, was launched on June 1, 1990 and operated for almost 9 years. The first 6 months of the mission were dedicated to the all sky-survey, using the Position Sensitive Proportional Counter detector (PSPC). The ROSAT survey was the first X-ray and XUV all-sky survey, using an imaging telescope, with a sensitivity about 1000 times that of The Uhuru Satellite. During the pointed phase of the project, ROSAT made deep observations of a wide variety of objects.

This supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus, known as the Cygnus Loop, is roughly 20,000 years old. It is generally circular in shape except for a break-out towards the south. In addition, there are many bright, filamentary structures... commonly known as the Veil Nebula. The ROSAT PSPC observation has allowed the temperature and density structure to be studied on a fine angular scale. Purple and blue indicate low values while yellow and red indicate high values.

The above video is a blend of the PSPC mosaic, showing the hard band (0.5-2.0 keV), and an optical image, using the Hubble palette.

Click here for an Ha:OIII:OIII  synthetic RGB image.
Click here for a narrowband color mapped image.
Click here for an Ha filtered b/w image.