Photo of the Week for June 23, 2017

For Canadian stargazers, perhaps no other sight says “summer” like Cygnus the swan. Indeed, SkyNews associate editor Ken Hewitt-White even went so far as to dub Cygnus “a true Canadian constellation.” Otherwise known as the Northern Cross, Cygnus is home to a bright swath of Milky Way and a rich assortment of deep-sky wonders, including the Veil Nebula, found just south of the celestial swan’s eastern wingtip.

This photo of the Veil, captured by Benoit Gagnon, features the region of nebulosity known as NGC6960, which is adorned by 4.2-magnitude star, 52 Cygni. Benoit used a Takahashi FSQ-106ED f/5 apochromatic refractor telescope and a QSI 683wsg-8 CCD camera to acquire a total of eight hours of image data recorded through H-alpha and O-III filters.