Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)
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SH2-132 (Part of) The Lion Nebula, niteman1946
SH2-132 (Part of) The Lion Nebula
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SH2-132 (Part of) The Lion Nebula

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SH2-132 (Part of) The Lion Nebula, niteman1946
SH2-132 (Part of) The Lion Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

SH2-132 (Part of) The Lion Nebula

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Description

Note: the following summary is for the entirety of the nebula.  The above image represents only a portion of the Lion's mane, a very small portion of the total object. 

Sh2-132 is a large emission nebula visible in the constellation Cepheus. It is located on the southern edge of the constellation, a short distance from the border with the Lizard, along the plain of the Milky Way.  The most suitable period for its observation in the evening sky falls between the months of July and December and it is considerably facilitated for observers located in the regions of the terrestrial northern hemisphere.
Sh2-132 is located at a distance of almost 3200 parsecs (almost 10400 light years), thus placing itself within the Perseus Arm, in the region of Cepheus OB1, a large and luminous OB association. The stars responsible for the ionization of its gases are very hot and massive; in particular, two Wolf-Rayet stars, known with the abbreviations HD 211564 and HD 211853 (the latter also having the abbreviation WR 153), as well as a star of spectral class O8.5V and about ten stars of class B.Around the class O star and one of the Wolf-Rayet stars extends a clearly visible bubble in the radio wave band, identified with the acronym Shell B, probably originating from the stellar wind of the two massive stars.
A similar but smaller structure, Shell A, hosts a class K star near its center. It is believed that chain star formation processes took place in the nebula in the past; currently these processes appear to be suspended, since there is no trace of recent activity.
Nine sources of infrared radiation and a maser with H2O emissions have been identified in the direction of the nebula.  [Source:  Wikipedia, It]. 

CAPTURE Information: 
The image was captured with the iOptron CEM120 mount , the venerable Meade 12"LX200 SCT OTA, and my QHY295m Pro mono cmos camera at F7.16 (2182mm FL).  Image subs were taken through Astronomik's narrowband filters of Ha, OIII and SII. 

IMAGE information -- 2022
Ha (300s): 26 subs (2.17 hrs.) on Nov 27th and 29th, 2022.
OIII (300s): 30 subs (2.50 hrs.) on Nov 27th, 28th and 29th, 2022.
SII  (300s): 28 subs (2.33 hrs.) on Nov 28th and 29th, 2022.

All subs were shot at 300s and -10C.  All exposures were done at 1x1 bin, Gain 1600 and Offset 56.  Lights, Darks, Flats and Flat Darks were used for processing. 

Processing was done in PixInsight following good practice and, for the most part, kayronjm's tutorial of Feb. 24th from several years back. 
Credit also goes to Rick Stevenson’s Color Mask Script and Christopher Gomez’s tutorial.

This is a slight  crop owing to little movement between subs.

COMMENTS:
This is the second time I’ve imaged this target. The first was in 2020 using my departed Atik 383L+mono CCD.  I believe at that time there wasn't much to look at.

ONE LAST THING:
My CEM120 iOptron mount has been back to the Massachusetts service center twice to correct for problematic tracking.  And I had commented previously that I was having to trash about 20% of the subs due to large drive excursions.  Since then, with guidance from iOptron, I loosened the RA drive belt and the results have been positive while still mixed.  I had previously mentioned that I was losing much fewer subs, but there is still a problem with RA excursions so great that the guide star would be lost. This has been reported to iOptron and they have yet to respond. 

With this particular target, There were no sub losses due to unacceptable RA (or Dec) excursions.  Note that this was a relatively small sample (only 84+ subs).

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SH2-132 (Part of) The Lion Nebula, niteman1946