Christine

We will present optical images and spectra of a few stars that are projected within the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant’s boundaries that show evidence for an
interaction of recent stellar mass loss material with the remnant’s forward shock.
Shock interactions are visible in the spectra and morphology of these star’s mass loss material, indicating these stars currently lie inside the remnant. Such stellar mass loss/shock interactions yield a new and robust distance method for
estimating a distance to the Cygnus Loop based on stellar spectroscopic distances. We find the Cygnus Loop lies at a distance of 1.1 +/- 0.2 kpc, significantly larger than previous estimates but more consistent with a supernova explosion energy of around 10^51 erg.