Sh2-225 and Sh2-227 in Auriga

[gorann]

Had some clear nights although I had to endure temperatures below -20°C, which is fine for a viking, and I now have a small treasure chest of data (I hope, but most of it still needs to be checked and stacked).

Now within two days it tuned into rain, clouds and +5°C.

Here are two quite faint objects from the Sharpless Catalogue. They are therefore also rarely imaged, especially Sh2-225. Sh2-225 is actually only the annotation of a rather small relatively bright structure (as seen by the annotations here), but by going deep (17.5 hours RASA data at f/2) this image clearly reveals that Sh2-225 is part of a very large ring-like structure. Or maybe not, I think I see that it is a large ball shaped Ha-emitting structure centrally obscured by dark nebulosity.

Caught 19 Jan with my dual RASA8 rig equipped with ASI2600MCs and IDAS NBZ filters on a Mesu. 210 x 5 min. Processed in PI and PS with the new XT tools.

Comments most welcome as always!

Cheers, Göran

[WolfieGlos]

How about calling it the “Arcade Machine Grabber Nebula” ? Sh2-225 with its “ring” looks like the grabber, and sh2-227 is the prize 😂

It must be some very faint Ha in the middle if 17.5 hours of rasa hasn’t pulled it out. Great as always Goran, and it’s nice to see images of objects rarely seen (if at all)  

[gorann]

Thanks Chris! I see what you see😃

If I take a starless version and stretch it a bit more, I get an image that may not be pretty but it does suggest that there is a lot of dark nebulosity obscuring the Ha, for example making a red ball look like a red ring. So what we here see as discrete Ha objects may actually be a sea of Ha shining through holes in dark nebulosity.