IC 2149, a very strange planetary (lowenthalm)

IC 2149, a very strange planetary

The first time I captured image data on this objects, I realized it was a pretty oddball tiny object that needed some really good seeing to truly capture. My exposure also needed to be adjusted to prevent the bright object from saturating my camera's sensor.

These are my best efforts so far, showing the nebula's bipolar jets superimposed on faint diffraction spikes. I will try capturing this object again with in such a way to rotate the diffraction spikes away from the nebula axis. The saturation is a little too high in version "A", and caused some loss of detail in the inner blue region. Reprocessing again improved this in version B. Version C is a variant that has better nebula edge definition and color, but may be actually bloated like some of the brighter stars in that version. So, B or C are the best versions. You also can see some color retained in B and C in the polar jets

The central star turned green in the initial "A' version during processing because I accidentally pinned the blue channel. This is corrected in the subsequent revisions.

Research papers also seem to indicate some confusion about what is going on in this planetary!

Image scale is 0.5 arc seconds per pixel, so this little object is about 20 by 30 arc seconds

Original
B
Final
C

B

Description: The original is the 1st attempt and this is the 4th. The nebula is so bright that it produces a glow around it like a bright star. I think I have managed to leave the glow as just a neutral white halo, while showing the inner and edge structure. Not over saturated like the original either. The central star is blue, not green like in the original!

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: Either version B or C is closer to correct. Version C is a bit more "bloated" as bright stars have more noticeable halos (probably from a filter reflection) and the nebula edges are wider and sharper. So maybe I should take a vote as to whether B or C is more "right"!

Uploaded: ...

Astrophotography with Dobson

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Planetary Nebula

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2525534
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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