Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scorpius (Sco)  ·  Contains:  Bug Nebula  ·  NGC 6302  ·  PK349+01.1

Image of the day 07/27/2023

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
    NGC 6302 | Revealing An Extended Nebula, Kevin Morefield
    Powered byPixInsight

    NGC 6302 | Revealing An Extended Nebula

    Image of the day 07/27/2023

    Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
      NGC 6302 | Revealing An Extended Nebula, Kevin Morefield
      Powered byPixInsight

      NGC 6302 | Revealing An Extended Nebula

      Equipment

      Loading...

      Acquisition details

      Loading...

      Description

      NGC 6302, also known as the Butterfly or Bug Nebula, is famous as on of the earlier Hubble targets.  This is a planetary nebula and the central star is now a white dwarf.  This star is one of the hottest stars known with a surface temperature over 250,000 degrees Celsius.  By contrast the Sun's surface temperature is a cool 5600 degrees C.  

      I believe I captured some features here that I have not seen elsewhere.  Most all images show a bulbous red extension beyond the hourglass on the right side.  But I see a similar but fainter version on the left side in this image.  I also see evidence of an OIII shell.  Arcs of blue and some red can be seen outside the extend of the main hourglass shape.  This may come from the later expulsion of charged particles that happened after the creation of the hourglass structure.  Nasa's site describes these here: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/multimedia/ero/ero_ngc6302.html

      "The WFC3 image reveals a complex history of ejections from the star. The star first evolved into a huge red-giant star, with a diameter of about 1,000 times that of our Sun. It then lost its extended outer layers. Some of this gas was cast off from its equator at a relatively slow speed, perhaps as low as 20,000 miles an hour, creating the doughnut-shaped ring. Other gas was ejected perpendicular to the ring at higher speeds, producing the elongated "wings" of the butterfly-shaped structure. Later, as the central star heated up, a much faster stellar wind, a stream of charged particles travelling at more than 2 million miles an hour, plowed through the existing wing-shaped structure, further modifying its shape."

      The FOV of the Hubble images is too small to show any of these outer features.  I could not find any images from other professional scopes or on Astrobin that show these outer structures.  I do see some of the left side nebulosity in this image from La Silla.   https://esahubble.org/images/heic0407b/  If you know of any images that show these extended features, especially the OIII lobes, please let me know!

      I suspect that others may have captured data on this before but of course it is quite faint.  Also there is a background Ha emission and an accompanying star field.  I think the background in most images may have been darked to deal with this faint Ha field and the features clipped out.  This Ha field is best seen in the full field version.   The background Ha field can be differentiated from the Planetary by color.  The background is a purer red while the planetary is more orange. 

      LRGB and SHO were captured, however, the primary image here is SHO with RGB stars.  The core of the nebula is incredibly bright so I shortened my narrowband subs to 5 minutes and my LRGB subs to 2 minutes.

      Comments

      Revisions

      • Final
        NGC 6302 | Revealing An Extended Nebula, Kevin Morefield
        Original
        NGC 6302 | Revealing An Extended Nebula, Kevin Morefield
        B
        NGC 6302 | Revealing An Extended Nebula, Kevin Morefield
        C

      B

      Description: Complete frame showing the background Ha field

      Uploaded: ...

      C

      Description: Extreme stretch of the RGB data to show the star field and associated Ha background emission. (about 4.5 hours total)

      Uploaded: ...

      Sky plot

      Sky plot

      Histogram

      NGC 6302 | Revealing An Extended Nebula, Kevin Morefield

      In these public groups

      Narrowband imaging