Jutting out from the galactic band in the southern constellation Ara, there is a supernova remnant of massive proportion. It has some of the most beautiful waves and filaments of any SNR I’ve looked at. These undulating waves we see here in this image are formed by the shockwave of this very ancient explosion smacking into walls of interstellar gas. The Ara SNR is believed to be formed by a weak supernova, as evidenced by its lack of Oiii emission.
That being said the last time anyone looked at this thing in Oiii was in the
2001 paper by Walker and Zealey. Back then they noted a “lack of detectable Oiii” in the remnant. I guess cameras got better over the last 23 years because there was some tenuous Oiii emission present, along with a new planetary nebula nestled within the waves.
Falls 7 so far is believed to be a planetary nebula. It is very distant at about 20,000 light-years from Earth. At its heart is a mildly hot star with a temperature of about 21000K which I suspect is the progenitor star. Visually, it appears to have a shockwave interaction with the supernova remnant, pushing back on the expanding shockwave to create a bubble nestled within.
This image was captured last summer using the FSQ85 in Hakos, this image started as something to image in Ha while the moon was out. The system is currently offline due to some computer issues, but I hope to have it back running within the next month or two! Until then, the raw data for this image along with a processing guide is available on my website, along with raw data and video for many other images.
I hope y’all enjoy the photo!
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