The Eye of Sauron: Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) in HOO (jimwgram)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Aquarius (Aqr) · Contains: Helix Nebula · NGC 7293 · PK036-57.1

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The Eye of Sauron: Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) in HOO

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The Eye of Sauron: Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) in HOO

I switched back to my DSO image train from planetary, and have been working on a few different projects over the last week or so. Getting a decent image of the Helix Nebula, aka "Eye of God" or "Eye of Sauron"

has been my primary goal. It's been tricky -- Helix doesn't rise very high in the sky at my latitude, and marine clouds rolling in have cut down my viewing time most nights. Still, I had a couple of decent nights, and, piece by piece, over the course of 5 different nights, managed to get some Ha and OIII data.

This data was captured with my Celestron EdgeHD 9.25" -- 6h 39m of Ha and 3h 54m of OIII. The result is not perfect, but considering my very neophyte PI skills and sub-par viewing conditions, I'm fairly happy with this first attempt. Although I was hoping for a little more structural detail, I feel like you can at least make out a bit of the cometary knots that are characteristic of Helix.

The Helix Nebula is around 650 light years away, which makes it one of the closest known planetary nebulas to Earth, as well as the one with the largest apparent size in the night sky.

Original
C
Final
D

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5017358
PixInsight job	6S8OGQVOGPT8F7GVQPF89QPGCXPM0S3I
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	22h29m35s.785
RA (top/left)	22h28m33s.230
RA (top/right)	22h28m32s.674
RA (bottom/right)	22h30m38s.842
RA (bottom/left)	22h30m38s.734

Dec (center)	-20°50′04″.30
Dec (top/left)	-20°32′38″.57
Dec (top/right)	-21°07′26″.39
Dec (bottom/right)	-21°07′28″.63
Dec (bottom/left)	-20°32′40″.21

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The Eye of Sauron: Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) in HOO

The Eye of Sauron: Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) in HOO

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The Eye of Sauron: Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) in HOO

The Eye of Sauron: Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) in HOO

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