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Sh2-183 Sh2-181 The Demon Nebula, Mau_Bard
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Sh2-183 Sh2-181 The Demon Nebula

Revision title: Enhanced Ha Background

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Sh2-183 Sh2-181 The Demon Nebula, Mau_Bard
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Sh2-183 Sh2-181 The Demon Nebula

Revision title: Enhanced Ha Background

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Description

This picture of one of the farthest emission nebulae visible form earth was taken during the nights of 19, 20, 25, 26 October and 2 November 2022 from my backyard in Vienna under Bortle 7 sky.
It is a faint object emitting mostly in Ha. The OIII signal was nearly missing in Sh2-183. It was more pronounced for Sh2-181 and the small Sh2-182.

Little information is available on this object; the most extensive and documented one that I found and reported here is from the website galaxymap.

In the image field are also visible two tiny planetary nebulae PK124+02.1 and PK 121+03.1.

November 2023 update: I recently pictured Sh2-180, located in the Outer arm as well - just south of Sh2-183, that shares many of the same characteristics.


For the curious
The planetary nebulae classification PK letters are the acronym composed by the initials of the names of the two Czech astronomers Luboš Perek and Luboš Kohoutek who complied the PK catalog. The numbers following PK in the designation are the galactic coordinates of the object separated by the sign +/- of the galactic altitude.


Sh 2-183
This is an apparently large and distant HII region that is obscured by foreground dust. It consists of 44 thousand solar masses of ionized gas and is at least 3.9 million years old. The stars ionising the gas are unknown and are probably obscured by the foreground dust [1].

Avedisova locates Sh 2-183 in star formation region SFR 123.20+2.83, with 16 components, including a water maser and 8 infrared sources. One of these infrared sources is the young stellar object IRAS 00468+6527.

This object shows an extended irregular structure at radio frequencies as this 2.7 GHz image taken with the Effelsberg 100m radio telescope reveals.

If this object is really located at 7000 parsecs (23000 light years), then the size in the radio image suggests that it may be one of the largest star formation regions in the outer galaxy. Note, however, that streaming motions in the Perseus arm can result in exaggerated distance estimates if velocity data is used alone to determine an object's distance (and the current distance estimate is, indeed, based on gas velocity).

Remark: should the distance really be 23000 light years, then the object would be located in the Milky Way Outer Arm rather than in the Perseus one, see picture at the bottom.

Notes
 1. ^ Landecker, T. L., Anderson, M. D., Routledge, D., et al. (1992). "Sharpless 183 - an H II region in the Perseus arm", Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 258, 495-506.

Sh2-183 comment taken from http://galaxymap.org/cat/view/sharpless/183

image.png
Picture of the Milky way with galactic longitude. The red dot indicates the position of Sh2-183 provided that the estimated distance of 23 kly is correct.
Original image by NASA/JPL-Caltech (author R. Hurt) edited by me.

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