Jones-Emberson 1 (PK 164+31.1) is a 14th magnitude planetary nebula in the constellation Lynx at a distance of 1600 light years. It is a larger planetary with low surface brightness.

Discovered in 1939 by R. Jones and R. Emberson, it's "PK" designation comes from the names of Czechoslovakian astronomers Luboš Perek and Luboš Kohoutek, who in 1967 created an extensive catalog of all of the planetary nebulae known in the Milky Way as of 1964. The numbers indicate the position of the object on the sky. ("PK 164+31.1" basically represents the planetary nebula that when using the galactic coordinate system has a galactic longitude of 164 degrees, a galactic latitude of +31 degrees, and is the first such object in the Perek-Kohoutek catalog to occupy that particular one square degree area of sky). (Source Wikipedia).

This is quite possibly what will become of our Sun. The bubble of expanding gas pictured above is the the remnants of the atmosphere of a Sun-like star expelled as its supply of fusion-able core hydrogen became depleted. Visible near the center of the nebula is what remains of the core itself -- a 16.8-magnitude blue-hot white dwarf star. This particularly photogenic planetary nebula shows faint intricate shells of gas likely expelled at different times toward the end the star's demise, and whose structure is not fully understood. Due to its faintness (magnitude 17) and low surface brightness, the object is only visible with a good-sized telescope. Although the expanding nebula will fade away over the next few thousand years, the central white dwarf may well survive for billions of years -- to when our universe may be a very different place. (Source APOD).

The image was captured with the Meade 12"LX200, using the Atik 383L+ mono at F7.16. Astronomik's Ha filter for luminance was the only one used. All subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 10 minutes each.

Ha : 22 subs (3.67 hr) on Apr 15th, Apr 18th and Apr 22th.

Processing was done with PixInsight. Only Ha was used to develop the Luminance image. No R, G and B were collected for the color mix. North is up. This is a very slight crop.

The capture of object PK164+31.1 was inspired by separate works in early April of Francesco and Emilio, over at Forum Astrofili Italiani. It was interesting trying to locate the object with only the DEC and RA data, since its location is not in my Meade's database. As you can see, I didn't quite fit the target at the center of the field of view. However, I found this composition interesting since there is a small galaxy on the lower left to counterbalance the nebula on the right side.