Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  31 Cyg  ·  The star 30 Cyg  ·  The star ο1 Cyg
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320, Götz Golla
Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320
Powered byPixInsight

Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320, Götz Golla
Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320
Powered byPixInsight

Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

This area in the sky is close to Deneb with NGC7000 and the Sadr region, yet it is seldomly photographed and Stellarium doesnt show any nebulosity here (kstars does show some). 

This image is composed with the Hubble palette
R: SII
G: Halpha
O: OIII

A alternative version is made with the HOO palette. I also show a B/W image of the OIII emission line only.

There is a lot of HII gas here shining brightly in Halpha. The gas distribution is very chaotic and very beautiful by itself. But there are two more interesting objects in the field. They are shining mainly in the OIII line and one of them is very weak. In order to make it more visible I used several techniques:
  • First I subtracted the stars with the starnet++ tool of Siril
  • Then I did a GHS of  the blue channel of the image only
  • I added the stars back with pixelmath, but only with a factor of 0.7 to make the nebulae come out better.
  • Postprocessing with Rawtherapee was only very minor to improve blackness.

The blue fliaments in the upper center actually are the outer shell of a bubble of hot gas shining in OIII. Some other images of the area on Astrobin show the bubble even better.  Such bubbles can either be supernova remnants or they may have been created by strong winds of a supermassive star. In our case the object has been identified as SNR and is called G82.2+5.3. The filaments to the east and west are shock heated gas. Spectra  suggest shock velocities around 100 km/s and low electron densities. The more diffuse OIII emission results from photoionization processes. See [1].
The OIII emission correlates with thermal radio emission. The radio emission was detected a long time ago during one of the first surveys of galactic radio sources carried out by Gart Westerhout in 1956. It was carried out with the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory. Among the 74 discovered real objects, our SNR was number 63 and is thus called Westerhout (W) 63.

Another object shining in the OIII emission line is in the lower right corner. Its very small and  worth zooming in on,  because it has a beautiful shape. It is the planetary nebula candidate PM 1-320, see [2]. The object has been observed and published on Astrobin very few times. It is certainly worth viewing with a larger telescope and focal length.

[1] F. Mavromatakis - B. Aschenbach - P. Boumis - J. Papamastorakis: Astronomy & Astrophysics 415, 2004
[2] http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=PN%20PM%20%201-320

Comments

Revisions

  • Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320, Götz Golla
    Original
  • Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320, Götz Golla
    K
  • Final
    Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320, Götz Golla
    L

K

Title: OIII Channel Only

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Skyscape around LBN325 with Westerhout 63 and PM 1-320, Götz Golla