Crescent Nebula, WR 134, & Many More! (Kurt Zeppetello)

Crescent Nebula, WR 134, & Many More!

Link: http://youtube.com/c/AstroQuest1

The main object in this view is the Crescent Nebula, on the left (also known as NGC 6888, Caldwell 27, Sharpless 105), which is an emission nebula located approximately 5000 light-years away in Cygnus. Current structure is a result of a collision of faster moving stellar wind from Wolf-Rayet Star WR 136 with slower moving wind from when the star ejected its outer layers when it became a red giant 250,000 to 500,000 years ago. The resulting collision has ionized the gas causing it to glow. The second most prominent object is Wolf-Rayet star WR 134, on the right, located approximately 6000 ly away, which like the NGC 6888 is also blowing off its outer layers at very high speeds. The blue arc was produced when the outer layer collided with the gas that was already surrounding the star.

Both the Crescent Nebula and WR 134 show a strong Oxygen III signal (blue color) in addition to the more common Hydrogen Alpha (red color). I used the IDAS NBZ dual band filter and was very pleased to pick up so much of the fainter less abundant Oxygen. To the lower left south of the Crescent is a recently discovered (2007) planetary nebula named the Soap Bubble Nebula (a.k.a PN G075.5+01.7). It is very faint and found only in the OIII band. Below the Soap Bubble another emission nebula LBN 209 that contains an oxygen rich blue region. Just scrolling around in that same area further to the left I discovered a tiny PN that does not show up on the Stellarium or Astrobin Plate Solver. I was about to give up on this nebula but then I thought of all the work Gary Imm does especially with his new compendium and searched on Simbad, turns out this PN is designated as PNA66 69 (RA 20 19 58.3 / DEC +38 24 02.16). Although it is very small it looks surprisingly well defined in my widefield setup, might be worth a look with more focal length.

If I had to do this over I would have framed it a bit lower to fully incorporate LBN 195 & SH2-104 on the center bottom. I also like the swirling ribbon-like structure of the hydrogen gas in this entire region. I did end up tossing about four hours of data but in order to image at all in New England you have to collect data when you can even if it is not ideal in the hopes that some usable data will be obtained.

Dates: 8-22-23, 8-23, 8-31, 9-1, 9-3, 9-4, 9-6, 9-14, 9-19, 9-20

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8657922
PixInsight job	7M432YWXN25DK4RYZ0WSE0Y9GVXIZULX
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h10m59s.99
RA (top/left)	20h10m57s.65
RA (top/right)	19h58m35s.12
RA (bottom/right)	20h11m02s.58
RA (bottom/left)	20h23m45s.19

Dec (center)	+37°23′42″.2
Dec (top/left)	+40°06′25″.9
Dec (top/right)	+36°18′29″.10
Dec (bottom/right)	+34°41′17″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+38°23′44″.3

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