M57, the most detailed image ever taken

[Avdhoeven]

I try to find the distance of the star to get an estimate of its velocity (minimum), but I can't find any of this information....

[Astro_king]

fascinating... this is one of the best lapsed pictures i have seen!

[Beulah]

Thanks - this is truly fascinating stuff!! Hope the moving 'star' mystery is solved...

[r3i]

It sure is but i have to say im really not sure how fast on average a star should travel relative to us so im not sure if im overwhelmed or underwhelmed with fascination

I think what I found fascinating was that: sure we've heard about and understand proper motion, that the stars 'move' relative to the celestial sphere usually over thousands of years, but it was great to actually see photographic evidence of it happening.

[Avdhoeven]

Thanks for your nice replies! I was also astonished to see the motion. I really would love to find more about it. What I basically need is to measure magnitudes in different bands. Then I can obtain a B-V index and get the star type. Then I can obtain the absolute magnitude and get the distance. From that a velocity estimate can be made. The problem I have is obtaining the magnitude with high precision. If there is somebody who can do this I would love to know how....

[Tim]

This is just great

Modern images taken of most objects when compared to those from astronomy "antiquity" reveal some of these moving stars. M1 for instance has a very similar mover to this one.

Well spotted at any rate, if nobody else has noticed it you should be able to notify somebody or other about it

[Avdhoeven]

I found on the net some old images from 1922 and 1959. This shows the motion in the past 90 (!) years... I love to find something like this....

[Avdhoeven]

I wanted to make a rough estimate of the distance of this star to calculate its velocity perpendicular to our solar system. Therefore I made same photometric measurements from the Hubble imagery. This gives a difference in magnitude for the V and I channels (V-I) of about 1.5 +/- 0.2.

According to Rucinsky (1987) this corresponds to a red dwarf star with a designation of about K5-K8. When using spectroscopic parallax this gives a distance of the star of about 650-950 lightyears. So it's clearly closer by then the nebula which has a distance of about 1500-2500 lightyears.

A motion of 0.1''/yr corresponds with a speed of the star of about 95-140 km/s.

[jammo]

Absolutely stunning image, its so beautiful, so much intricate detail, Fantastic!!!

[Avdhoeven]

I did a better alignment and found one more image from 1995 which I added. Also you can even see the expansion of the nebula between 2000 and 2008. The Hubble is a great machine...

Expansion:

[PH-R]

Very nice update!