The eerie NGC 246 or the Skull Nebula, Caldwell 56 in HaLRGB (gmadkat)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Cetus (Cet) · Contains: NGC 246

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The eerie NGC 246 or the Skull Nebula, Caldwell 56 in HaLRGB

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The eerie NGC 246 or the Skull Nebula, Caldwell 56 in HaLRGB

Just in time for Halloween, the spooky NGC 246 also known as the Skull Nebula or Caldwell 56, is a Planetary Nebula situated 1600 light years away in the constellation of Cetus. It is the first known planetary nebula with a hierarchical triple star system at its center.

The central star is a 12th magnitude white dwarf star moving through space at a rate of 80 kilometers per second. and is part of a binary pair. The primary star has has reached its end of life. The hydrogen (red) and oxygen (light blue) gases of the nebula appear to glow, illuminating the skull’s face against the dark backdrop of interstellar space.

The rapidly moving gases on the nebula’s leading edge have the same motion as the central star and the gas slows down and compresses as it collides with the interstellar medium. The gas clouds on the shell’s trailing edge continue to expand freely. Very fascinating!

Zooming in reveals the amazing background galaxies that are tiny but distinct! Including one that is in the bottom of the PN itself!

Imaged in LRGB and H alpha on the shared system, PlaneWave CDK 700 at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile.

Image Acquisition and Preprocessing: Mike Selby

Processing details:

I used the Lum for detail and used Dynamic PSF and used theat as a start point for BXT and from there, to fine tune in preview mode the nebulosity and fine details until I was happy with the result.

Combined RGB as usual and applied BXT to stars only, and then used Emission Line to blend in the Ha on the R channel. Then applied LRGB and continued to finetune Starless.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8657334
PixInsight job	571H7U15VUNOHRSN81YQXA8V8SGQCOU9
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h47m06s.141
RA (top/left)	00h47m48s.470
RA (top/right)	00h46m24s.540
RA (bottom/right)	00h46m24s.196
RA (bottom/left)	00h47m47s.791

Dec (center)	-11°52′15″.52
Dec (top/left)	-11°42′48″.47
Dec (top/right)	-11°42′43″.95
Dec (bottom/right)	-12°01′42″.62
Dec (bottom/left)	-12°01′47″.95

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The eerie NGC 246 or the Skull Nebula, Caldwell 56 in HaLRGB

The eerie NGC 246 or the Skull Nebula, Caldwell 56 in HaLRGB

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The eerie NGC 246 or the Skull Nebula, Caldwell 56 in HaLRGB

The eerie NGC 246 or the Skull Nebula, Caldwell 56 in HaLRGB

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