This
Astrobin Debut Object is a planetary nebula is located 16,000 light years away in the constellation of Scutum at a declination of -10 degrees. It is a magnitude 15 PN which spans 30 arc-seconds in our apparent view. This corresponds to the typical PN diameter of 2 light years. This is one of the furthest PNe that I have imaged, which is why it appears so small in our apparent view.
We have a great side-on view perspective of this
bi-polar PN. Both end lobes are blown out. The white torus section of this PN is unusual, with an orientation that is almost parallel to the long axis of the PN instead of being perpendicular to it.
This PN was discovered by the astronomer Dr. Rudolph Minkowski. His work at Mt. Wilson used the 60 inch and 100 inch telescopes to more than double the number of planetary nebulae known at the time. The Minkowski PN catalog was extracted from 3 papers he published in the 1940s. Although he didn’t number the objects and formally assemble them as a catalog, we now refer to the objects of the three papers by the designators M 1-xx, M 2-xx, and M 3-xx. A fourth catalog (M4-xx) was later added from his observations, for a total of 207 PN. My Minkowski PN collection is
here.
You may notice that this image was taken in April of
last year. The cloudy skies this year have allowed me to catch up on my processing backlog.
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