The Lion Nebula (Sh2-132)

[Yoddha]

Hello,

Sh2-132, also named the Lion nebula is 10,000 to 12,000 light-years away, located in the Perseus arm of our Galaxy, with a size of more than 250 light years. On our sky is located on the border between the constellations of Cepheus and Lacerta. It is interesting that this image contains two Wolf-Rayet stars - WR 153ab near the "wall" structure in the lion's head an WR 152 in the blue dominated part of the nebula. The Wolf-Rayet stars are very big, bight and hot stars with strong solar winds. These winds are so strong that eject huge amount of mass from the stars - something like 10 Sun masses per million years. The extreme nature of the Wolf-Rayet stars always dominate the nearby regions and lightening the surrounding area. In this case there are two of them and they are helped from 5 small open clusters of young stars to show us something very beautiful.

This project is my personal integration time record - 20h 55min :) The object is quite faint, but is still in reach for the workhorse about wider fields - the trusty 80mm refractor.

Total 20h 55min - WO 80FD, QHY22, Ha+OIII, CEM60 APT, PHD2, PI, PS

Here is the processed Ha stack. Posting it as there are a lot of interesting details :)

[tooth_dr]

Outstanding Ivo, thanks for sharing.

[Grant]

That's a beautiful capture - not come across this object before either!

Thanks for sharing

 

[Yoddha]

1 hour ago, tooth_dr said:

Outstanding Ivo, thanks for sharing.

Many thanks, Adam!

[Yoddha]

1 hour ago, Grant said:

That's a beautiful capture - not come across this object before either!

Thanks for sharing

 

Many thanks, Grant!

[MarsG76]

Very nice Ivo, one for the splash of APT4.0??

[Yoddha]

Many thanks!

Definitely will be used for the splash screen :)

[simmo39]

Another Wow image! just luv it.

[carastro]

This is a hard target and well captured and processed.  Already liked it on Astrobin.

Carole 

[Yoddha]

Thank you Andy!

 

[Yoddha]

Many thanks Carole!