R Aquarii is a symbiotic binary surrounded by a large and complex nebula known as Cederblad 211 with a prominent curved jet.
This nebula is roughly 650 years old. R Aquarii is believed to contain a white dwarf and a Mira-type variable in a binary system. The orbital period is approximately 44 years.
The giant primary star is a Mira variable, a star that pulsates and changes temperature, leading to very large visual brightness changes.
In total it varies in brightness by a factor of 750, and with a period of 390 days.
The central region of the jet shows an ejection that took place around 190 years ago, as well as much younger structures
In 2018 Mike Sidonio discovered previously unknown faint outer features from his Terroux Observatory near Canberra, Australia (
https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/r_aquarii).
These were featured in a paper by Limmets and collaborators in 2018 (
New insights into the outflows from R Aquarii}.
Despite these detections, no clear imaging of these extensions has been produced to date.
We therefore decided to conduct deep imaging from our remote observatories in southern Spain so as to reveal the physical nature of these features.
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