Planetary Nebula M2-51 (lowenthalm)

Planetary Nebula M2-51

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

This is a nice planetary in Cepheus I imaged back in early September and then after processing it decided I needed more data to capture the outer edges of the nebula better, so went back and captured additional IRCut and Duoband (OIII/Ha/Hb) subs in late September. I finally got back to processing it and here is the result. Combining the color data from the IR/UV Cut images with the luminance of the stars in the Duoband data, and then combining that with the nebula color from the Duoband data is always a tricky process. I am gradually getting better at it!

The nebula's distance (and therefore its size) has not been determined very well. The best pre-Gaia mission estimate from 2008 put it at 1941 parsecs away. The central progenitor star is just barely detectible here peeking out from behind the bright 13th magnitude orange star (which is actually behind the nebula - about twice as distant, roughly). The parallax data for the central star is of unusually low quality due to (I presume) its proximity to the bright star. The best measurement is 0.8381mas±0.5707mas, which is a really big error bar, but is at least consistent with the 2008 distance estimate.

In my image, I measure the primary nebula size at 1.5 by 1 arc minute. If you look carefully along the long axis, you can see a hint of further extension of the red Ha emission that almost doubles the longer dimension. I would expect a deeper image under a darker sky to show this more clearly.

Each sub was acquired using lucky imaging. I batch them into subs so I don't have to fill my hard disk with 4 second exposures!

Original
Final
B

B

Description: Changed the black point, as the first version seemed too dark under daylight viewing conditions.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6645227
PixInsight job	Q89CXJAVIGZ1ROK0UN0U4OZRLZY4XNFG
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	22h16m04s.297
RA (top/left)	22h16m42s.723
RA (top/right)	22h15m25s.998
RA (bottom/right)	22h15m26s.900
RA (bottom/left)	22h16m42s.444

Dec (center)	+57°28′27″.48
Dec (top/left)	+57°32′09″.34
Dec (top/right)	+57°32′10″.81
Dec (bottom/right)	+57°24′44″.91
Dec (bottom/left)	+57°24′43″.18

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