This is the third and last imaging project to come out of a recent data collection session that occurred in late September. Given the expected weather patterns, it may be my last new image of 2023.
WR 134 is a Wolf-Rayet Star in a complex area in the constellation Cygnus. Located 6,000 light years away, WR 134 is associated with a bubble nebula formed by the intense radiation and solar winds of this star. While there are a lot of objects in this image, it should be noted that it also contains WR 135 and WR 137. These were the very first Wolf-Rayet stars ever discovered. They stood out because their spectra show intense emission lines, whereas typical stars only show absorption lines. These massive and bright stars burn fiercely and live short lives!
This image is the result of 15.5 hours of integration taken with my Askar FRA400 f/5.5 Astrograph, a ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro camera, and a ZWO AM5 mount. The AM5 mount continued to perform excellently, typically giving me tracking errors of 0.24! Best I have ever seen.
This region is so rich, I decided to also add my version of the Annotated image here, so that you could better see where the three WR stars were:
A friend of mine, Rick Albrecht saw my image and discovered that if you look at it a certain way, you can see the FACE of a Mysterious figure looking back at you. So now, just in time for Holloween, I share with you the FACE in Cygnus!
Can you see it?
Full details on this imaging project, including a detailed, step-by-step processing walkthrough can be found on my website here:
https://cosgrovescosmos.com/projects/wr134Thanks for looking,
Pat
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