Sauron is watching you : Helix Nebula (Louis Leroux)

Image of the day 01/16/2025

Sauron is watching you : Helix Nebula

🇨🇱 x 🇲🇦

À l'automne, en attendant les cibles d'hiver, nous avons décidé avec l'équipe "Altaïr of Atlas Astrophotographers" de réaliser un projet intermédiaire d'une cible plus commune mais qui était pratiquement impossible à réaliser à l'époque où nous faisions du nomade en France de par sa hauteur dans le ciel. Le défi de tenter une nébuleuse planétaire lumineuse mais assez petite pour notre setup s'est imposé assez vite. Notre choix s'est arrêté sur la nébuleuse de l'Hélice, une cible qui ne dépasse pas 20° de haut en France, mais qui se trouve à 40° au Maroc.

This fall, while we waited for the winter targets, the AAA team and I decided to work on an intermediate project involving a more common target, but one that was almost impossible to achieve at the time we were "nomadic" in France because of its altitude in the sky. The challenge of attempting a planetary nebula with a "strong" luminosity but small for our setup came fairly quickly. We chose the Helix nebula, a target that is no more than 20° high in France, but 40° high in Morocco.

Cela devait être un projet rapide avec quelques heures de shoot, peut-être une dizaine d'heures tout au plus. En discutant avec Lucas, qui est maintenant basé au Chili chez DeepSkyChile, on se rend compte qu'il est aussi sur cette même cible et avec l'exact même setup ! Tout de suite, on décide de mettre nos datas en commun pour faire une image plus aboutie. Au Chili, la cible est très haute dans le ciel à cette période de l'année, presque au zénith, on profite donc du seeing incroyable et de l'extrême noirceur du ciel. Au Maroc, la cible est présente 3 heures dans le ciel vers le Sud, le seeing est moins bon mais le ciel tout aussi sombre.

It was going to be a quick project with a few hours of shooting, maybe ten at the most. Talking to Lucas, who is now based in Chile at DeepSkyChile, we realised that he was also working on the same target and with the exact same setup ! We immediately decided to combine our data to produce a more complete image. In Chile, the target is very high in the sky at this time of year, almost at the zenith, so we took advantage of the incredible seeing and the extreme darkness of the sky. In Morocco, the target is in the sky for 3 hours towards the south, the seeing is not as good but the sky is very dark too.

La nébuleuse de l'Hélice ou NGC 7293 est une nébuleuse planétaire de la constellation du Verseau, à proximité du Poisson austral. Surnommée « l’œil de Dieu » ou encore « l’œil de Sauron » pour sa forme, elle est une des nébuleuses planétaires de la Voie Lactée les plus proches de la Terre. La structure complexe en forme d'œil humain de cette nébuleuse planétaire s'est formée lorsque le noyau solaire de son étoile centrale (de la taille du Soleil) s'est contracté pour devenir une naine blanche, au moment de l'évolution stellaire finale de sa fin de vie, phase durant laquelle elle s'est débarrassée par expulsions successives de gaz de ses couches externes. Les différentes couches soufflées dévoilent toute leur splendeur avec les filtres SHO à bandes étroites, mettant en avant ce violent phénomène dans un océan noir de vide interstellaire...

The Helix Nebula or NGC 7293 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Aquarius, near Piscis Austrinus. Nicknamed the ‘Eye of God’ for its shape, it is one of the closest planetary nebulae in the Milky Way to Earth. The complex human-eye-shaped structure of this planetary nebula was formed when the solar core of its central star (the size of the Sun) contracted to become a white dwarf, at the time of its final stellar evolution, a phase during which it got rid of its outer layers by successive expulsions of gas. The different blown-out layers reveal all their beauty with narrowband SHO filters, highlighting this violent phenomenon in a black ocean of interstellar vacuum...

INFO :
- Mix HOO-SHO-RGB
- Setup 1 : Rio Hurtado, Chile
- Setup 2 : Oukaïmeden, Morocco

Clear skies !

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	ZTRT7G9YOMH3QL1SIKKIBPALJ3VBSKQY
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	22h29m38s.72
RA (top/left)	22h31m53s.14
RA (top/right)	22h27m27s.45
RA (bottom/right)	22h27m23s.70
RA (bottom/left)	22h31m50s.53

Dec (center)	-20°49′35″.7
Dec (top/left)	-20°29′23″.5
Dec (top/right)	-20°28′14″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	-21°09′41″.0
Dec (bottom/left)	-21°10′49″.5

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Image of the day 01/16/2025

Sauron is watching you : Helix Nebula

Image of the day 01/16/2025

Sauron is watching you : Helix Nebula

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Image of the day 01/16/2025

Sauron is watching you : Helix Nebula

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Sauron is watching you : Helix Nebula

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