Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)

Image of the day 07/05/2019

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    Pickering's Triangle (NGC 6979), Gary Lopez
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    Pickering's Triangle (NGC 6979)

    Image of the day 07/05/2019

    Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
      Pickering's Triangle (NGC 6979), Gary Lopez
      Powered byPixInsight

      Pickering's Triangle (NGC 6979)

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      Description

      In the constellation Cygnus is a chaotic lace-work of glowing filaments, remnants of a super nova explosion whose light reached Earth about 5,000 years ago. It is called Pickering's Triangle, named for Charles Pickering, the director of Harvard College Observatory, cataloged NGC 6979, and part of the Veil Nebula complex. It has been argued that this object should really be called Flemming's Triangular Wisp since it was identified by Pickering's assistant, Williamina Flemming. She is credited with discovering 10 novae, over 310 variable stars, and 59 gaseous nebulae (citation Steve Cannista, Universe Today).

      After three months of cloudy nights, the sky began peeking through last week, an hour or two at a time. The seeing was inconsistent which meant that while I collected more than 20 hours of data for this project, I used only 11.5 hours, light subs with HFR <2.5. I reduced that number again in the creation of a master luminance (comprised of Ha, OIII, and SII), using only subs with an HFR <2.0. All in all, it was worth the effort as the resulting image has nice detail and shows both the characteristic ribbons of glowing Ha and OIII, as well as faint diaphanous sheets of gas and dust.

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