Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Lacerta (Lac)  ·  Contains:  IC 5217  ·  PK100-05.1
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IC 5217, Gary Imm
IC 5217, Gary Imm

IC 5217

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IC 5217, Gary Imm
IC 5217, Gary Imm

IC 5217

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Description

This object is a tiny planetary nebula located 18,000 light years away in the constellation of Lacerta at a declination of +51 degrees. The visible portion of this PN is about 12 arc-seconds wide, which at that distance corresponds to about 1 light year.

If you celebrated Thanksgiving last week and couldn’t think of too much to be thankful for in 2020, this entry is for you. You can be thankful that your sky objects are all more interesting than this one.

I believe that this is, by far, the furthest PN that I have imaged. Most PN are in the range of 2000 to 6000 light years away. This one is 18,000 light years away. That is a long way to see much detail on a PN.

Studies have shown that this PN is a bi-polar PN with open lobes, and we are only seeing the central ring edge-on vertically. The bi-polar lobes extend left and right but are too faint to be seen. In my mind, this object is like the Ring Nebula (M57), except that we are seeing it edge-on instead of face-on. Looking carefully, it is possible to see the beginning edges of each lobe extending left and right from the bright central edge-on ring.

Whatever the structure, there is not much to be seen here for this tiny, distant object.

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