This
Astrobin Debut Object is a small planetary nebula located 14,000 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus at a declination of +31 degrees. The bright portion spans 17 arc-seconds in our apparent view. This corresponds to a diameter of 1.2 light years.
Minkowski planetary nebulae were discovered by the German-American astronomer Dr. Rudolph Minkowski. His work at Mt. Wilson used up to 100 inch scopes to more than double the number of planetary nebulae known at the time. The Minkowski PN catalog was extracted from 3 papers he published in the 1940s. Although he didn’t number the objects and formally assemble them as a catalog, we now refer to the objects of the three papers by the designators M 1-xx, M 2-xx, and M 3-xx. A fourth catalog (M4-xx) was later added from his observations, for a total of 207 PN. My collection of Minkowski PN is seen
here.
The HII signal dominates this object, although the torus region has equal amounts of OIII and HII, as indicated by its bright white color. This is a uniquely structured PN. Both the inner white torus and the outer halo look distorted. It looks like a multipolar PN with a bipolar outflow that likely has varied in direction with time.
I do not see a progenitor star in or near the center.
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