Youtube video on the discovery here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhH_jQciyhE&ab_channel=BrayFallsThis is FalFer1, The Pistachio Nebula! It is a collaboration between me and my friend Chester Hall-Fernandez. FalFer1 is a medium-sized [Oiii] nebula in a very quiet part of the southern Milkyway.
We teamed up in December, whilst Chester was working an engineering internship at Mount John Observatory in New Zealand. He had the unique opportunity to work on a small [Oiii] sky survey with a cooled astro camera and wide-angle DSLR lens. The first indication of this nebula's existence was shown in this survey photograph:
Once we were sure it was not in any major catalogs, I used my Namibia based remote telescope to gather 70h of exposure on the object. As the exposure increased, it became clear that the nebula followed a very similar morphology to recent [Oiii] discoveries.
The likely candidate central star (CSPN)
is this one.
One thing we were surprised by, was how bright the nebula was in [Oiii]. The starless RGB image even showed the faintest hint of the nebula. However, due to the lack of any bright Ha in the nebula, it has been hidden from surveys until now.
Processing was done individually, and then the elements that were the best from each of our renditions were blended to create the final image. As the outer regions of the nebula are so faint, processing was undertaken with a lot of care to ensure structures remained faithful.
We hope you all enjoy the image!
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