Sharpless 2-188 The Dolphin Nebula

[Petergoodhew]

AKA Simeis 22.  A peskily-faint planetary nebula. So faint that I ended up shooting 30-minute subs at bin 4x4.

24 hours in total. RGB 10x300s each.

Ha 21x1200s bin 1x1 plus 10x1800s bin 4x4

OIII 12x1200s bin 1x1, plus 3x1800s bin 4x4

[Shibby]

Very good job! I know exactly how faint it is, having tried once and just captured the wisp on the right hand side!

[gorann]

A great and very unusual capture. I do like the framing as the "thing" lokks like it is heading (and/or looking down) towards the right. Was that deliberate?

[Petergoodhew]

25 minutes ago, gorann said:

Was that deliberate?

I wish I could say that it was Göran, but I would be lying!  I let SGP choose the RA and Dec settings, and the rest was down to the existing camera orientation.

[gorann]

6 minutes ago, Petergoodhew said:

I wish I could say that it was Göran, but I would be lying!  I let SGP choose the RA and Dec settings, and the rest was down to the existing camera orientation.

I guessed so but it worked out really well!

PS. why is it called the Dolphin nebula? At least in your version it really looks like an alien see-through head with a well vascularized brain and a nasty little alien mouth....

[JohnSadlerAstro]

That is really nice!

31 minutes ago, gorann said:

PS. why is it called the Dolphin nebula? At least in your version it really looks like an alien see-through head with a well vascularized brain and a nasty little alien mouth....

Presumably because the part of the nebula normally captured is a dolphin sort of shape? The brightest part kinda looks like a curved dolphin shape, the tail is at the bottom edge in this photo.

John

[gorann]

5 minutes ago, JohnSadlerAstro said:

That is really nice!

Presumably because the part of the nebula normally captured is a dolphin sort of shape? The brightest part kinda looks like a curved dolphin shape.

John

I see. And Peter has clearly gone deeper than a dophin

[swag72]

This is a great capture..... even more so given how faint it is.  I gave up on this one a couple of years ago after deciding it was soul destroyingly faint ?

[alanjgreen]

Great image. I've marked this up on my sky safari target list to try with my night vision (where I am having plenty of success moving through the sharpness catalog). If it's really faint as you describe then I won't set my hopes too high...

[Allinthehead]

Very nicely done indeed, and a new one for me.?

[tooth_dr]

Wow 30 minute subs and 4x4 ! Stunning