Abell 6 & HFG1 planetary nebulae (Massimo Di Fusco)

Abell 6 & HFG1 planetary nebulae

To take this shot, I asked for the help of my amateur astrophotographer friend Alessandro in order to accumulate as many hours of signal as possible. We each used our own setup, each from our own city sky (one worse than the other!) and I must say that my humble Evostar ED80 defended itself very well in the presence of its awesome Askar FRA600.

The subjects imaged are located in the constellation Cassiopeia, just above the Heart Nebula, and are cataloged with the acronyms Abell 6 (in the center) and HFG1 (further to the right and lower).
HFG1 (Heckathorn-Fesen-Gull 1) and Abell 6 make for an interesting pair of planetary nebulae (PN). Abell 6 has the bubble look of most PNs and it remains quite faint (Mag = 15). It has a blue look from ionization of OIII and has also a fairly strong Ha component as well. Discovered in 1982, HFG1 (PK 136+05) has a more complex structure: it presents an arc of a circle opposite the tail, in the direction of movement of the nebula, which suggests that it is a shock wave front of matter interacting with the interstellar medium. The planetary nebula is formed from a binary system comprised of a white dwarf and a large red giant star. The two stars are very close and rotate about each other in just 14 hours.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8631589
PixInsight job	62N8ZEYKBC39GDC8W3PFWHHN2421S0IL
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	03h00m35s.45
RA (top/left)	02h51m43s.52
RA (top/right)	03h09m37s.31
RA (bottom/right)	03h10m04s.82
RA (bottom/left)	02h50m58s.39

Dec (center)	+64°37′38″.7
Dec (top/left)	+63°42′56″.5
Dec (top/right)	+63°43′52″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	+65°30′19″.3
Dec (bottom/left)	+65°29′10″.6

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