When I aimed my Vaonis Vespera Pro smart telescope at the Eastern Veil Nebula, the last thing I expected was to be greeted by an eerie figure resembling a Xenomorph from "Alien".
Using a dual-band filter to mitigate light pollution and the glare of August's full moon I carried out observations on Aug. 8 and Aug. 12, totalling about 1.5 hours. The resulting stacked JPEG reveals delicate tendrils of gas, when viewed just right, strikingly reminiscent of the franchise's iconic villain.
The Veil Nebula, located about 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, is the visible portion of that larger Cygnus Loop, a vast supernova remnant created by the explosion of a star about 20 times the mass of the sun, some 10,000 years ago, according to NASA.
