Abell 39

[alan4908]

Abell 39  is a low surface brightness planetary nebula located in Hercules. At the centre is a blue/white dwarf star at the end of its life. About 20,000 ago, this star expelled a glowing shell of gas creating the near spherical gas cloud that can be seen today. This is estimated to be 5 light years across and about 6000 light years away.   Over time, the gas will spread over a very wide area of space and will eventually be used for creating new stars.   

Very distant background galaxies can also be seen in the image, including one that is visible through the translucent gas of the nebula (see annotated image).

This LRGB image was taken with my Esprit 150 and also has an OIII blend into the blue channel, it represents approximately 17 hours integration time.

Alan

Annotated

LIGHTS: L:18,R:17,G:15,B:19 x 600s; OIII:10 * 1800s all at -20C.

Edited October 22, 2021 by alan4908

[Adreneline]

Wow! Excellent image and a great, concise description.

Thanks for sharing.

Adrian

[geeklee]

Superb image Alan.  Thanks for the description and annotated copy as well, helped pick up those faint galaxies.

[ONIKKINEN]

Very nice! Never seen this one before, a very odd looking perfect sphere.

A bunch of galaxied in the background on top of the annotated ones it looks like.

[simmo39]

Thats very nice!

[Dinglem]

@alan4908 To be honest I have never heard or seen this object before, so I had to look on the internet as my first impression was you'd layered a blue circle over a starfield.

I'm now extremely impressed with your capture and determined to improve my knowledge and skills to achieve something half as good as this.

[alan4908]

23 hours ago, Adreneline said:

Wow! Excellent image and a great, concise description.

Thanks for sharing.

Adrian

Thanks for the comment Adrian..

 

23 hours ago, geeklee said:

Superb image Alan.  Thanks for the description and annotated copy as well, helped pick up those faint galaxies.

Thanks - yes, those faint galaxies are quite interesting and very far away. 

16 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Very nice! Never seen this one before, a very odd looking perfect sphere.

A bunch of galaxied in the background on top of the annotated ones it looks like.

Thanks - I agree, it is very odd looking ! 

15 hours ago, simmo39 said:

Thats very nice!

Thanks !

15 hours ago, Dinglem said:

To be honest I have never heard or seen this object before, so I had to look on the internet as my first impression was you'd layered a blue circle over a starfield.

I'm now extremely impressed with your capture and determined to improve my knowledge and skills to achieve something half as good as this.

Thanks for the comment -  and good luck with your own attempts.  

Alan

[tomato]

Great image, all 17 hrs on the 150 showing through on this one. 
 

I bet some of those tiny unmarked galaxies are at a serious distance from us.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

What a great image and a new one on me 🙂 

6 minutes ago, tomato said:

I bet some of those tiny unmarked galaxies are at a serious distance from us.

I wonder how much it would cost you to get Jeff Bezos to fly you there working on the cost per mile it costs to go into sub orbit space 🙂 
More than my pension will allow I guess.

Steve

[Sp@ce_d]

Nice one, that stands out very well 

[Craney]

This object always reminds me of the time that I committed 6 hours of Hydrogen Alpha to it....   when clear nights were as rare as teachers' pay rises.

Only to find out ........

Nice picture btw....

[Tom OD]

Super. Looks great just floating there in the centre.

Tom

[alan4908]

On 23/10/2021 at 10:52, tomato said:

Great image, all 17 hrs on the 150 showing through on this one. 
 

I bet some of those tiny unmarked galaxies are at a serious distance from us.

Thanks - yes - I also bet that the field of view contains objects that are even further away eg quasers. 

 

On 23/10/2021 at 11:01, teoria_del_big_bang said:

What a great image and a new one on me

Thanks ! 

On 23/10/2021 at 11:39, Sp@ce_d said:

Nice one, that stands out very well 

Thank you for the comment.

On 23/10/2021 at 11:54, Craney said:

This object always reminds me of the time that I committed 6 hours of Hydrogen Alpha to it....   when clear nights were as rare as teachers' pay rises.

Only to find out ........

Nice picture btw....

Thanks . I've sometimes wasted even greater amounts of time on imaging due to incorrect selection of filters - I have an automated set up and image many different objects per night through I only tend to check the results once my set up has finished a particular image. 

On 23/10/2021 at 20:38, Tom OD said:

Super. Looks great just floating there in the centre.

Tom

Thanks Tom. I did think of giving it a severe cropping but decided it looked better in the wider field perspective.

Alan

[Spitfire]

Very nice image.

Tracking looks spot on with 1800sec exposure for the OIII. Which one of the mounts did you use for this?

Have tried this myself with a 6inch RC but only have a few hours on it..........not a patch on yours!

Geoff

[alan4908]

5 hours ago, Spitfire said:

Very nice image.

Tracking looks spot on with 1800sec exposure for the OIII. Which one of the mounts did you use for this?

Have tried this myself with a 6inch RC but only have a few hours on it..........not a patch on yours!

Geoff

Thanks for the comment Geoff.

I use my 10micron mount in unguided mode for all my imaging now. I gave up guiding mainly due to my desire to improve my  imaging productivity from UK skies - at least I don't loose guide stars anymore 

Alan