Planetary nebulae, EEVA-style

[Mike JW]

Well done Geoff. I cannot get my Dob down that  low.

Mike

[Martin Meredith]

Half the fun is finding these things. Sometimes the colour is a dead giveaway.

I've observed NGC 6567 and totally agree about the rich star field, typical of the area. In my shot the planetary is distinctly blue, as you're getting too. There's a great triple at the right edge of the field (HJ 594) and I hadn't noticed the lovely arc of stars just to its lower right on my shot.

I'll have to add NGC 6537 to my list. I have a few more degrees of dec to play with here at 42 deg...

Martin

[roelb]

from a long time ago (august 2017)

NGC 6537

Evo 8 @ F/6.4

ATIK Infinity

3 x 45 s

[Cosmic Geoff]

I found that virtualcolony.com/sac/ has useful lists of planetary nebulae down to very faint ones.  I printed off lists for Aquila and Cygnus down to mag. 15, lists that contain a number of planetaries not in the "!00 Brightest" list.  On June 25 2022 I had a go at some with NGC catalog numbers (easier to enter into Synscan). 

Gear: 102mm f5 achro, ASI224MC, EQ5 Synscan, captured with Sharpcap.  I targeted IC4846, NGC6766, NGC6772, NGC6778, NGC6785, NGC6807, NGC6833, NGC6881, NGC6894 and NGC7026 and identified almost all of them.  I had a problem with the colour of the stacked images. 

I was puzzled by NGC6766 which seems to be the same position, brightness and size as NGC6884 which I recorded last year - an easy blue object.

Three sample images are shown below.

[Bill S]

During the early morning of 5 July I had a look at some PNs in Hercules. NGC 6210 was listed as an object of interest for June by the BAA Deep Sky Section / Callum Potter and discussed in an earlier BAA Journal article. https://britastro.org/wp-content/plugins/baa-frontend-tweaks/baa-check-file.php?filename=2022/06/NGC-6210-A-forgotten-planetary-nebula-in-Hercules.pdf.

It is known as the Turtle Nebula and is about 6000 ly away and Mag. 8.4. I took LRGB subs (5 seconds each) using Starlight Live feeding into Jocular for live stacking.

 

Another one I looked at was NGC 6058 which is 13,000 ly away and Mag 13. Again colour helps.

 

The third Hercules PN was Abell 39. This is about 3300 ly away and mag. 13.7. This was a bit ghostly and my snapshot consists of 40 L and 10 each of R, G and B.  I maybe need to go back on another darker night to look at this almost perfectly spherical planetary nebula again.

 

All my shots were with a Lodestar X2  and my 200 mm Newtonian at f/5. I usually use a focal reducer but left it out for these observations.

 

 

[Mike JW]

Abell 59 - a somewhat faint PN in Sagitta was a challenge I could not resist. I have not been able to find anything about it. Below is my attempt. Look to the left of the label Abell 59 and just below a pair of stars is the beginning of a faint arc of fuzz - this corresponds to the brighter section of this PN.  Must do better next time - really need darker and more transparent skies and probably run the camera for longer but I enjoyed the challenge. This PN is probably one for the true imagers.

Mike

[Mike JW]

I tried again last night for Abell 59 in slightly better conditions - see below. Not really any better, so this looks like as good as I can get it

[Mike JW]

Abell 62 in Aquila is a tiny PN, magnitude 14.8. It lies about 1600 lyrs away. Colour images show a definite outer ring but very hard to identify the central star.

Mike

[Mike JW]

M 1-67 lies in Sagitta and is not strictly speaking a PN. The central star is a Wolf Rayet and has shed some material but it has yet to go bang and create the classic PN. It could be classed as a Wolf Rayet Nebula.  It would appear to have two shells which are expanding at about 100,000 mph. The big blast of material happened about 10,000 years ago and has created glowing blobs of gas/dust.

Mike

 

[Martin Meredith]

It isn't often I get down as low as Fornax, but the opportunity arose this evening to observe NGC 1360 just after transit at around 18 degrees above the horizon.

I had no idea what to expect and could barely believe what appeared -- a large and relatively bright blue oval, the likes of which I've not seen anywhere in the sky. This is known as the Robin's Egg Nebula, and is a strong radiator of Oiii. I'd love to see this from lower latitudes.

It is rather noisy looking through the murk (check out the FWHM) and I had to turn the gain up which meant I hadn't any suitable darks to cancel the amp glow at bottom left, but this is EEVA...

There's a great image here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_1360

[Mike JW]

Always worth a go at the low down objects. The central white dwarf star is obviously white in your shot.

Mike

[Cosmic Geoff]

Alas, NGC1360 is too low to be accessed from my back garden, and is now at its greatest altitude in twilight.