Sky Safari Sharpless confusion around the Bubble (Night Vision)

[alanjgreen]

I have been working my way through the Sharpless objects aided by the "Astrophotography Sky Atlas" by Bracken and Sky Safari v5 Pro.

I was looking at Sharpless objects around the Bubble nebula when I came upon a nebula (one of many Sharpless) that are "missing" from the Sky Safari catalog. I have been adding the missing ones by adding a central background star to my observing lists in Sky Safari as I build my own observing lists.

Last night, I used Sky Safari to navigate to the beautiful sh2-157 with no issues.

I pushed on to sh2-158 (as listed in Sky Safari) and made notes of my observation ( which was "obvious patch of nebula" ) then noticed another nebula at the edge of the fov...

I pushed over and noted my observation ("mystery nebula patch near the Bubble. Looks like two circles together. Two stars peeping through one circle. Brighter patch to the left of the two stars"). I looked at Sky Safari and noted a star in the centre of the FOV (SAO 20502) and moved on...

 

When I look on the internet this morning then it appears that my observation of the mystery nebula is in fact a pefect description of sh2-158 which means my observation of sh2-158 is actually sh2-159.

 

Sky Safari lists sh2-158 co-ords as RA 23h16m DEC +61 12

Bracken lists sh2-158 co-ords as RA 23h13m DEC +61 31 and sh2-159 as RA 23h15m DEC +61 07

(Wikipedia seems to agree with Bracken).

 

It seems Sky Safari has them mixed up! Certainly had me scratching my head this morning. I will try to confirm this next time I get out.

For completeness SAO 20502 is located at RA 23h14m  DEC +61 40

 

Just thought I would share my experience!

Clear Skies,

Alan

[PeterW]

Having a good resource to be able to confirm when you think you can see some wispy stuff really helps. I do hope you don’t start finding stuff that Sharpless didn’t see... ?

 

PEter