The East Veil Nebula: NGC 6992

This is the eastern region of the supernova remnant known as the Veil Nebula. I first posted about the western region of the Veil Nebula and commented that it is too big to fit the full nebula in the field of view of my telescope. As with the western region, east is up and west is down. Even with this Eastern add-on, there is still one frame missing which would fit in between the two end-regions I captured so far. There might be smaller bits missing from the north/south regions as well.

What about the star which was the source of the supernova?
It is estimated to be almost evenly positioned between the west and the eastern regions, with its actual position being slightly closer to the western region from Earth’s perspective. After exploding, the star became a neutron star. Neutron stars are basically stars of a very small radius (“typically 18 miles”) that are mostly composed of tightly packed neutrons. A sufficiently massive neutron star will continue to collapse into a black hole. This was the case for the star that gave us the the Veil Nebula. There will be no visible light emitted from the black hole, so we cannot see it. The gravitational force is so strong, light cannot achieve the escape velocity necessary to leave that region.

I'll leave it to Doc from Back to the Future to have the last word...

Marty McFly: “Woa, this is heavy.”
Doc: "There's that word again; "heavy". Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?"