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Abell 85 / CTB 1, Gary Imm
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Abell 85 / CTB 1

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Abell 85 / CTB 1, Gary Imm
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Abell 85 / CTB 1

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Description

This object is a very faint supernova remnant located 10,000 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia at a declination of +62 degrees. The CTB stands for "CalTech B list radio source".  The object was first identified in a 1960 paper. It has an apparent diameter of about a half a degree, the same size as our full moon, which corresponds to a diameter of 100 light years.

When discovered, it was thought to be a planetary nebula, so Abell included it in his catalog of planetary nebulae as Abell 85. The dominant light is from energized Hydrogen (Ha) and Oxygen (OIII) atoms, which show up in my HOO image as red and cyan, respectively. 

All of the sources agree that this object is a Supernova Remnant (SNR). But I am struck at the degree of similarity between this object and Sh2-308, which is not a SNR but a Wolf-Rayet star in the pre-supernova phase. Both are spherical with many filaments and a breakout region. In fact, the famous van den Bergh, in a 1973 paper, said "It is rather remarkable that the optical shell of CTB1 is morphologically almost indistinguishable from the filamentary shell that surrounds the sixth-magnitude WN5 star HD50896", the latter being the source star for Sh2-308. 

Both objects, Abell 85 and Sh2-308, appear to be undergoing deformation characteristic of bi-polar jets. In this object, the breakout section is polar opposite of a section in the lower right at about 5 o'clock which appears to be seeing the onset of a breakout as well. SH2-308 is slightly smaller at 60 light years in diameter, and has not expanded far enough out yet to experience breakout of one of the lobes, as we see here in Abell 85. So this object seems more like a Wolf-Rayet nebula than a SNR to me, although the research says it is a SNR.  I just don't understand how an object like this one could have obvious bipolar jet behaviour and yet be the result of a SNR explosion.     

The planetary nebula to the right of this object is We 2-262.  This HII dominated PN is about 5000 light years away and has a large PN diameter of 5 light years.

There appears to be a SNR remnant at the top of the image but I could not identify it.

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