This
Astrobin Debut Object is a planetary nebula located 15,000 light years away in the constellation of Sagittarius at a declination of -22 degrees. It is a magnitude 17 PN which spans about 1 arc-minute in our apparent view.
We are viewing this bipolar PN from a side-on view, so that the torus section constraining the PN appears rectangular in cross-section. My collection of side-on bipolar PN is seen
here.
The 2 faint bipolar lobes of this object, top and bottom, are blown out from the bipolar flow from the unseen progenitor star.
The actual width of the bright torus region is typical for a PN, at 2 light years.
The signal here is predominantly Ha, with some OIII present in the inner portion of the torus region. This PN looks almost identical to the PN
Sh1-89.
Minkowski planetary nebulae are small, challenging, and difficult to see visually without the use of OIII or HII filters. Some of them are very interesting, while many are stellar-like or otherwise not as interesting. These PNs were discovered by German-American astronomer Dr. Rudolph Minkowski. His work at Mt. Wilson used up to 100 inch scopes to more than double the number of planetary nebulae known at the time. The Minkowski PN catalog was extracted from 3 papers he published in the 1940s. Although he didn’t number the objects and formally assemble them as a catalog, we now refer to the objects of the three papers by the designators M 1-xx, M 2-xx, and M 3-xx. A fourth catalog (M4-xx) was later added from his observations, for a total of 207 PN. The brightest objects are seen in the M1-xx collection, as this object is. My Minkowski PN collection is seen
here.
Comments