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The Crystal Ball Nebula: NGC 1514


John

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Heres a nice planetary nebula currently well placed in Taurus, not far from the Pleiades. This evening with my 12" dob I found NGC 1514, AKA The Crystal Ball, hard to spot, as a nebula, but it's 9th magnitude central star is easy enough so the trick is to pinpoint that, then apply the O-III filter and, voila, the star is surrounded by a nice clear and reasonably large ball of nebulosity at 90x magnification. With careful examination some vague structure starts to appear across the nebulosity with the central star still shining boldly forth from it's centre. Without the filter and the star might easily be mistaken for any other - just the slightest haze surrounding it. I guess a UHC would have some enabling effect as well but the O-III makes a great deal of difference to this one, turning it from obscure to fascinating :smiley:

This one was discovered by William Herschel on the 13th November 1790 and he described it as follows:

" A most singular phenomenon !  A star of about 8th magnitude with a faint luminous atmosphere, of circular form, and about 3 minutes in diameter.  The star is in the centre, and the atmosphere is so faint and delicate and equal throughout that there can be no surmise of its consisting of stars; nor can there be a doubt of the evident connection between the atmosphere and the star."

The overall magnitude of the nebula is given as 9.8 but my goodness it looks so much better with the O-III filter :thumbright:

Here is the entry from the Observing at Skyhoud website with a nice locational diagram:

https://observing.skyhound.com/archives/dec/NGC_1514.html

 

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Great report!

I had spotted this in my atlas - I wasn't familiar with it - and had it on my list of targets for 2 nights ago, only to be thwarted by some thin high cloud :rolleyes2:

Next time, fingers crossed!  I'll be armed with my O-III filter to see if I can tease out any detail :)

Thanks for the link - interesting comment about this being one of the observations that made Herschel question the belief that all nebulous objects were comprised of unresolved stars.  Isn't it just great to be able to go out there and look at these things with our own eyes!

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8 minutes ago, niallk said:

.... Isn't it just great to be able to go out there and look at these things with our own eyes!

It's a great feeling to, at least in part, replicate the views that these great names of old might have had :icon_biggrin:

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  • 3 years later...

I was struggling to see the Crystal ball nebula tonight with my 180 Skymax and found this old thread. I added my UHC filter and the nebulosity showed up clearly at x140. Without it it seemed just an ordinary looking star. Great example where the right filter makes a ton of difference. This report was great help, I was prepared to abandon the search. Thanks, John!

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