Witch Head Nebula?

[ollypenrice]

OK, let's be clear that I couldn't see a witch's head. But, but... snuggled down in the lounger in my arctic gear I spent a nice long time looking to the west of Rigel and I'm confident that I was picking up that suspicious milkiness and reduced star count that whisper 'nebulosity.' This was in our 8x42 Leica bins. The Witch is utterly enormous and totally dwarfs M42 so I reckon I had a whiff of it. Nice.

Olly

[Double Kick Drum]

That's a big find.

Jealous of those lovely clear dark SE French skies.

Thanks for sharing

[rory]

good going indeed. mixture of dark clear skies and experience perhaps. id be happy to look at anything,im so fed up with this weather.

[estwing]

top find,well done..

[mert]

Very nice indeed.

[m_j_lyons]

What are the stats (NGC #, mag, etc) on the Witch's Head?

Thanks.

[ollypenrice]

What are the stats (NGC #, mag, etc) on the Witch's Head?

Thanks.

It's IC2118 but I can't find a magnitude for it. It barely has one! I've imaged it twice, viz;

and

The area is easy to identify in binoculars because of the triangular asterism west of Rigel. As I say, I couldn't get any shape but the sky wasn't truly black in the region where I know the nebula to be. I'm pretty sure of that. From this location Rigel transits at about 38 degrees above the theoretical horizon and the south is particularly dark here.

Olly

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Never seen the witch's head. I need a place as dark as yours, Olly. Well done!

[acey]

Well done on seeing it, Olly. According to Wikipedia it's a possible supernova remnant, making it among a very select class of object (also including the much easier Crab and Veil). According to Wolfgang Steinicke's NGC site, the Witch Head was discovered photographically by Max Wolf on 16 January 1891 using a 4" refractor. Wolf is of course the person who also discovered the Horsehead photographically, and lots more besides. Steinicke lists the object as IC 2118 = NGC 1909, i.e. a photographic rediscovery of an object previously seen and catalogued by William Herschel, who saw it on 20 December 1786, using his 18.7" reflector, and described it as "extremely large". Steinicke does not list photometric data for the object but obviously the surface brightness is the important parameter, not integrated magnitude, and it's going to be very low.