NGC 6960, 6979, 6992, 6995: The Veil Nebula

Right Ascension	20 : 51.0 (h:m)
Declination	30 : 40 (deg:m)
Distance	2.6 (kly)
Visual brightness	5.0 (mag)
Dimension	230 x 160 (arc min)

The image in this page was obtained by (and is courtesy of) Brad Wallis and Robert Provin, exposed 1 hour and 45 minutes on hypered 4x5 inch Kodak Tech Pan, on their 152mm f/7.5 Astro-Physics EDF refractor.

This object is so large (six times the diameter of the Full Moon) that to earlier observers its brighter parts appeared as a number of distinct diffuse nebulae, and were assigned e.g. separate NGC numbers, NGC 6960, NGC 6979, NGC 6992, and NGC 6995; fainter extensions have additional catalog identities: An extension of Northern part NGC 6979 got the designation NGC 6974, and an extension of southwestern NGC 6995 was cataloged as IC 1340. Already William Herschel had them as separate objects: H 2.206 = NGC 6979, H 5.14 = NGC 6992/95, H 5.15 = NGC 6960. Faint luminous material, not cataloged in NGC or IC, can be found throughout the object's extension.

Despite its overall brightness of about mag 5, this object is only visible to the naked eye under exceptionally good viewing conditions, because its light is distributed over the object's large size.