LDN 1622, the Boogeyman Nebula, is an infuriatingly faint tower of dust enveloped by a cloud of hydrogen alpha gas. This extra spooky object resides in the general Orion neighborhood, haunting the space just across Barnard’s loop from M78.
What truly differentiates LDN1622 from the other exciting towers of gas and dust is the characteristic bright region right towards the top of the tower. The source of illumination is the pre-main-sequence (PMS) star, HBC 515. The term pre-main-sequence indicates that HBC 515 has matured outside of the protostar stage but is presently undergoing its final stages of compression required to begin the fusion of hydrogen and transition into a main sequence star. Anyways - HBC 515 has been highly studied using a full slew of research telescopes ranging from the earth based Keck I and Subaru Telescopes, to based IR imaging performed by the Spitzer space telescope. The key findings of this work indicated that HBC 515 is actually a binary system of PMS stars, with protostar developing in the cloud surrounding the binary. The most interesting thing I took from this paper (see below) is the power of adaptive optics and its ability to allow for an earth based system to resolve the binary with a 0.5” separation. Call it a pipe dream but maybe one day this technology will be available at a consumer level and facilitate even better misuse of scientific grade equipment for pretty pictures.
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/SP1/h10b.pdf Michael and Jonathan Norman
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