HFG2 (PK247-04.1): A Nebular Carbunkle—Ouch! (Alex Woronow)

HFG2 (PK247-04.1): A Nebular Carbunkle—Ouch!

=MsoNoSpacingHFG2 (PK247-04.1): A Nebular Carbunkle—Ouch!OTA: CDK24
Camera: Moravian 61000Pro
Observatory: Heaven's Mirror
Date of Capture: Mar '24
Date of Processing: Mar '24

Exposures Used:
R: 10 x 180 sec
G: 10 x "
B: 10 x "
H: 33 x 1200 sec
O: 28 x   "
Total Exposure time: 21.8 hours
Image Width: 30 arc-minutes

Processing Tools:
1.   Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz, Radiant Photo
2.   Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator
3.   My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt), ColorTweaker

Target Description:
Officially, HFG2 is the circular planetary nebula in this image. You can identify the star likely responsible for this feature. To the left of that feature lies a more chaotic cloud. I suspect it originated as part of a spherical cloud that expanded, collided with the background nebula, and progressed outward in fragments whose current positions depended on the density variations in the background cloud. Below and to the right of the spherical cloud are arcs (blue), probably also part of an earlier eruption, perhaps the same one as just described, but these arcs have not encountered as much resistance as the other side did.

An alternative to the "encountering-a-background-cloud" scenario could be that the interstellar winds are blowing from the upper left to the lower right, and those interactions could be the cause…someone with a spectrograph might determine wind directions, I suppose.

Processing Description:
Although I used RGB and Ha, OIII in the processing, the RGB played two roles in the image. The first provided the RGB stars; the second allowed me to isolate the emission lines from the continuum spectrum. This image shows those isolated line components mapped to realistic colors. The stars have been muted somewhat to better focus attention on the nebula.

Target Statistics:
Distance: 6.23k ly
Apparent Magnitude: 16
Pixel Span at Target: 1.1E10 km

Alex Woronow

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9498334
PixInsight job	CKRL8CYZ66TRR3GO1ZLX3NROBDK4LSVY
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	07h42m20s.196
RA (top/left)	07h41m08s.731
RA (top/right)	07h43m31s.812
RA (bottom/right)	07h43m31s.453
RA (bottom/left)	07h41m08s.834

Dec (center)	-32°47′05″.76
Dec (top/left)	-32°56′51″.76
Dec (top/right)	-32°56′50″.31
Dec (bottom/right)	-32°37′16″.26
Dec (bottom/left)	-32°37′18″.30

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