NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 6960, NGC 6974, NGC 6979, NGC 6992, NGC 6995, and IC 1340 are all part of the Veil Nebula, the wonderful supernova remnant in Cygnus. Four of these "objects" are so large and so bright, that the generally poor positions in the NGC don't matter. Only the positions for NGC 6974 and NGC 6979 (both of which see) are completely off their intended parts of the nebulosity. For NGC 6960, both WH and JH adopt the position of [kappa] Cygni. They describe the nebulosity as extending north and south of the star, with JH noting it as brighter to the north. He traces it a little less than half a degree north, and just about that far south. I've followed the Herschels in adopting the position of [kappa] Cyg as that for this part of the Veil. WH described his "front-view" (what we now call the Herschelian focus of a reflecting telescope) in a note to his observation of NGC 6960. He wrote that at the Newtonian focus the nebula extended one degree across the sky, while at the Herschelian focus, it stretched twice as far. He was clearly extremely pleased with the performance of his telescope in its "front-view" configuration, and used it for most of his observations. In the IC2 Notes for NGC 6992, Dreyer paraphrases a short note by Pickering (at the end of an article in ApJ 23, 257, 1906) which describes the appearance of the entire Veil as seen on a 24-inch Bruce plate of 4 hours exposure. Unfortunately, Pickering chose to not publish the photograph; it would have made an impressive plate in this early ApJ paper.

===== NGC 6960 13.1" (5/21/82): this is the prominent western section of the "Veil nebula" and is spectacular with an OIII filter. Bright, extremely large, very elongated N-S, stretches across the entire low power field while passing through the bright unequal double 52 Cygni = 4.3/9.5 at 6". Fans out to the south and splits into two delicate branches and fainter wisps. The bright curving nebulosity north of 52 Cygni has a remarkable "electric" quality. It has an abrupt bend about midway and then tapers down to a narrow tip towards the north end gently bowing out towards the west side. Fantastic detail using a 20mm Nagler and OIII filter. 11x80 (5/26/84): both sections of Veil are easily visible in the 11x80 finder using a filter. 15x50 IS binoculars (8/27/11): the entire Veil was visible (eastern section was striking) using a pair of UHC filters threaded over the objectives. The western section through 52 Cygni took more care to view and the forked southern half was the most difficult section to pick up.