In the constellation Centaurus, there is a supernova with a very interesting history, its name is SN185 or RCW86. It is special because it is so young that the stellar explosion occurred in written history. In the year 185 AD it was observed by Chinese astronomers, in The Book of Later Han:

     "In the 2nd year of the epoch Zhongping [中平], the 10th month, on the day Guihai [癸亥] [December 7, Year 185], a 'guest star' appeared in the middle of the Southern Gate [南門], The size was half a bamboo mat. It displayed various colors, both pleasing and otherwise. It gradually lessened. In the 6th month of the succeeding year it disappeared.".

What remains from this event thousands of years later is a bright and intricate supernova remnant. The remnant itself straddles an area which is filled to the brim with PN and other PN like objects, one of which is the discovery in this image. Me and Chester Hall-Fernandez were analyzing our data of the lightning bolt SNR captured at 135mm, when we encountered a conspicuous blue-green blob on the leading edge of the brightest portion of RCW86. The blob had several probable hot stars, so I deemed it worth a follow-up with the FSQ85, and it turned out to be a real thing! 



I believe the CSPN to be this star, with a hot temperature of around 20,000K and a position in the central shell of the nebula. The burning question is whether or not this is a planetary nebula, or something else. If I were to guess, I would say it is not a PN, but rather one of the other hot subdwarf type Oiii nebulae due to having a similar shared morphology with other such objects. Due to its strange shape, it was unable to receive official cataloging on PNnet, so I am calling it 'FalFer2' for my second joint discovery with Chester. It is a beautiful object, and unlike the other Oiii objects it has bright H-alpha shock structures which add a very cool accent to the nebula. 


The image itself was a major pain to edit, as you can tell this object sits inside the extremely dense star fields of the Milky Way, which proved to be a big challenge in revealing the faint structures. I did the best I could here, but a longer focal length would really do well on this object I think! 

The surrounding region is littered with a huge number of PN, including multiple undocumented PN candidates of very small scale. I will be following up on a number of these smaller targets in the coming months: