A nineteen-frame mosaic of the full Veil Nebula photographed from Lakeway, Texas with two Seestar telescopes: the Eastern Veil arc at left, the filaments of Pickering’s Triangle at upper center, the Western Veil running down the right side past the bright star 52 Cygni, and faint red filaments of the southern rim across the bottom, north up.

The Veil Nebula — the Full Loop

Nineteen frames, two telescopes: a 10,000-year-old explosion, squared off for print

TelescopeEva (ZWO Seestar S50 Pro) + Darth Vader (Seestar S50)
Integration1401 minutes
LocationLakeway, TX
SkyBortle 6
CapturedOct 24, 2026
PhotoKyle Eberly · © 2026
ProcessingNineteen frames from both telescopes, about 23 hours in all, shot between early September and October 24, each plate-solved against the Gaia star catalog and blended onto one canvas. The robot-planned panels landed within a few arcminutes of where they were aimed. The last three filled the final slivers, so a full 4:3 print rectangle, about 4.4 × 3.3 degrees with the whole loop inside, is now covered edge to edge. For this version each panel’s sky glow was flattened before blending, which removed the brightness steps between panels.

What you're looking at

The Veil is the Cygnus Loop: the expanding shell of a star that exploded about 10,000 years ago, roughly 2,400 light-years away. The blast wave is still running outward through thin interstellar gas, and where it hits denser clumps the shocked gas glows, red from hydrogen, teal from oxygen.

The full loop is about three degrees across, six full moons, so no single frame of a small telescope holds it. The arcs that have names, the Eastern Veil, the Western Veil and Pickering’s Triangle, are just the brightest stretches of one continuous ring.

With the Crab and the Jellyfish, it completes the journal’s supernova timeline: the Crab at 1,000 years, compact and still electric; the Veil at 10,000, spread across the sky; the Jellyfish at 30,000 or more, dissolving into the clouds it hit.

The lesson

Two days ago this was an unfinished picture, published on purpose, with the gaps showing exactly where the next nights would go. The nights filled them.

It took ten sessions on two telescopes, and the first six were shot before I knew they’d end up as one image. The early frames weren’t wasted; they were inventory, waiting for a plan big enough to use them.

Most long projects look like this from the inside. Do the next panel.

How this mosaic came together

The first five frames were separate shoots from September and October, taken before there was any plan to join them. Everything after that was planned panel by panel and shot by the telescope robot. Tap a date to see the mosaic as it stood that morning.

Stage one of the Veil mosaic: five separate frames covering the Eastern Veil, Pickering’s Triangle and the Witch’s Broom, with gaps between them. — The last three slivers, filled in one night, and every panel’s sky evened out before blending. A full print rectangle, edge to edge.

Stage two: a robot panel fills in below the Eastern Veil. — The last three slivers, filled in one night, and every panel’s sky evened out before blending. A full print rectangle, edge to edge.

Zoom in on The Veil Nebula

Closer looks at pieces of this mosaic, each with its own page and story.

Object data

Object: The Cygnus Loop (NGC 6960, 6992/6995, Pickering’s Triangle)
Constellation: Cygnus
Type: Supernova remnant
Age: ~10,000 years
Frames: 19 (17 × S50 Pro, 2 × S50), 1,401 minutes
Status: Complete: a full print rectangle, covered edge to edge