🌟 NEW PLANETARY NEBULA DISCOVERY 🌟
We are excited to announce the discovery of a new planetary nebula candidate, HorFulEvReb 2 (a team of myself,
Jeffrey Horne,
Brian Fulda, and
Jaša Rebula), which we have nicknamed ‘Don’s Nebula’ in honor of Jeff’s father.
The story of this nebula began in July 2023 when Jeffrey Horne captured 174 hours of data on a region near the Elephant Trunk Nebula in Cepheus from his backyard in Nashville, TN, USA. Jeff posted the image online and shared the data with fellow astrophotographers Drew Evans and Brian Fulda, who noticed a small, faint blob in the image (see below).
Jaša Rebula, a Slovenia-based imager, also noticed this small blob and messaged the team about it. We then worked together to figure out that the Oiii signal wasn’t professionally catalogued anywhere. With Jaša’s help, it was formally submitted for review.
After patiently waiting months to hear back, we finally received the good news on November 30th — our submission was registered as a new planetary nebula candidate (
https://planetarynebulae.net/EN/page_np.php?id=1192).
The good news was bittersweet, though, because Jeff’s father, Don, was in the hospital. Don had been an avid amateur astronomer most of his life and had inspired Jeff to take up the hobby. Jeff was able to let his dad know about the discovery with his data, and Don was very proud. Don passed away just a few days later. Collectively, our team decided it would be a fitting tribute to nickname the nebula ‘Don’s Nebula’ in his honor.
Using my home observatory (SCA260 and ZWO ASI6200mm pro) in northern Arizona, USA (
https://NAZObservatory.com, I gathered higher resolution data for the team on Don’s Nebula. The object is very small, so we were only able to resolve a little bit of detail on it.
Since the discovery, we have been working together as a team to identify new regions of space where other potential discoveries might exist.
Ha - 9.5hrs
Oiii - 11hrs
RGB - 1h each
N is left, E is down
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