Planetary Nebula PuWe1 (Massimo Di Fusco)

Planetary Nebula PuWe1

I started shooting this planetary nebula in mid-September and with a lot of patience I accumulated as many shots as possible for 2 reasons: first, to reach an adequate SNR value that could allow me to push as much as possible in post-production to pump out the more as possible the nebula (definitely very faint); and second, to try to get out the very faint background H-alpha signal. I think I achieved the first objective and only partially the second, but I'm still satisfied considering that I'm shooting from a polluted city sky.

The subject of the picture is the planetary nebula known as PuWe1 (Purgathofer-Weinberger 1), located in the constellation of Lynx, imaged with both my setups (ED80 refractor and Konus 200/1000). Discovered by Alois Purgathofer and Ronald Weinberger in 1980 by analyzing plates from the Palomar Deep Sky Survey, PuWe1 is one of the largest and faintest planetary nebulae visible in our skies, with a diameter of 20 arc minutes (more or less like the full Moon); as well as one of the closest, being at a distance of "only" 1200 light years.

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8812737
PixInsight job	LORGYU73J6GXAU1G3NCUVLJUZMURZJ8T
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	06h19m27s.49
RA (top/left)	06h22m13s.82
RA (top/right)	06h16m39s.20
RA (bottom/right)	06h16m44s.70
RA (bottom/left)	06h22m12s.31

Dec (center)	+55°36′43″.4
Dec (top/left)	+56°00′05″.0
Dec (top/right)	+55°59′52″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+55°13′04″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	+55°13′18″.2

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