There are a number of reasons why planetary nebulae become asymmetrical like radiation and stellar winds from nearby stars, and by gravitational forces and the interstellar medium.  I can find nothing about this little red blob in particular.

There do not appear to other intentional versions on Astrobin. Apparently first observed on 9/24/2011. 

There are three incidental images barely visible in these images of Sh2 227. 


Charles Bracken


Goran Nilsson


Goran Nilsson (Take 2)


Anyone who takes an Sh2 image twice is a friend of mine! 


Information for this image is from the Isaac Newton Telescope Photometric Hα Survey of the Northern Galactic plane (IPHAS) PN Catalogue.  IPHAS J051733.3+393027.

It is apparent 67 arcseconds long.  Morphology is "A" or Asymmetric.

I believe the imaging and spectroscopy was done at "OS" or Observatory of Sierra Nevada (OSN) 1.5 m.

Note below the size was based on a 120s H-alpha exposure on a 1.5m telescope.



Since I plan to image more of these (there are a lot) here is a table of descriptors from the original paper cited above.

Major and where relevant, minor axis dimensions in arcseconds: the measurement of PNe size was done from the 120 s exposure Hα images so we are limited in description of the exact extent of the nebulae.

Morphological classification: assigned following the ‘ERBIAS’ morphological classifiers to indicate Elliptical, Round, Bipolar, Irregular, Asymmetric or quasi-stellar (unresolved or barely resolved) PNe.

The additional sub-classifiers of ‘amprs’ were also used where evident:

one-sided enhancement/asymmetries denoted with ‘a’

multiple shells or external structure as ‘m’

point symmetry ‘p’

well-defined ring structure or annulus ‘r’

resolved, internal structure as ‘s’.

Telescope and date for first spectroscopic confirmation: a two-letter code is used to identify each telescope used for spectroscopic confirmations as follows:

WH – WHT 4.2 m Intermediate Dispersion Spectrograph (IDS) on the 2.5 m INT and the spectrograph ISIS on the 4.2 mWilliam Herschel Telescope (WHT) located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma in the Canary Islands

IN – INT 2.5 m

SM – San Pedro Martir 2.0m Telescope (SPM) in Mexico with its Boller& Chivens (B&Ch) spectrograph.

KP – KPNO 2 m

GC – Grantecan 10 m

OS – OSN 1.5 m Observatory of Sierra Nevada (OSN) in Spain

MS – ANU 2.3 m with DBS

WI – ANU 2.3 m with WiFeS

SA – SAAO 1.9 m