Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Triangulum Australe (TrA)  ·  Contains:  HD138730  ·  HD139072  ·  HD139099  ·  HD139170  ·  HD139239  ·  HD139263  ·  HD139279  ·  HD139315  ·  HD139316  ·  HD139338  ·  HD139339  ·  HD139436  ·  HD139534  ·  HD139581  ·  HD139718  ·  HD139719  ·  HD139720  ·  HD139721  ·  HD139742  ·  HD139794  ·  HD139851  ·  HD139852  ·  HD139904  ·  HD139918  ·  HD140017  ·  HD140018  ·  HD140063  ·  HD140081  ·  HD140205  ·  HD140206  ·  And 168 more.
Five New Discoveries in Triangulum Australe, Bray Falls
Powered byPixInsight

Five New Discoveries in Triangulum Australe

Five New Discoveries in Triangulum Australe, Bray Falls
Powered byPixInsight

Five New Discoveries in Triangulum Australe

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Last year in March while my telescope was inside of a box on the way to Namibia, I was reached out to by @DanaPatchick about some potential new nebulae to explore in the Southern Hemisphere. In April when the telescope came online, I wasted no time getting to work on exploring the potential candidate Dana had sent me. What we ended up finding was a bit more than we had bargained for initially! 

Our intended target had been the nebula PaFal2, the small circular PN on the bottom left with stripes of Oiii. I scheduled a series of H-alpha and Oiii exposures centered on this object, and when I stacked the data, there were traces of a nebula. However, in the very corner of my frame, there was something WAY cooler. 

aaaa.jpg
After a ton of exposure time, what revealed itself was a relatively large-sized Oiii bow shock nebula. With some research, this turned out to be unknown along with our other candidate. So I adjusted my framing to make room for both nebulae. Several other objects also popped up after continuum subtraction: 

So what do we know about these objects? In short, not much. I would suspect that PaFal2 in this image is likely a true PN, but the rest of these objects could be ISM nebulae or unknowns. We cannot say anything for sure without spectra for these objects. 
bbb.jpg
These other Oiii objects are potential planetary nebula candidates which appeared in the same frame, they all had a good central star and a fairly strong signal. However, due to recent limitations with PNnet cataloging of amorphous Oiii nebulae, these did not receive a name. So for now, I'll just refer to these as PaFal3 - PaFal5. 

So where are these objects located? They all live within the Southern Constellation, Triangulum Australe. This is a section of the sky that is quite empty, it is mostly just stars from the southern Milky Way. There is some extremely faint diffuse Ha in the background, which was very difficult to pull out. Everything in this image was difficult to pull out with how faint it was.
Screen Shot 2024-01-29 at 11.48.14 AM.png
At the time I captured this image, I was also having some slippage in my focuser which made processing even more of a challenge. I definitely want to do a follow up on PaFal1 with a larger scope. 

As for the naming of these nebulae, we have decided to name PaFal1 "The God Head Nebula". The godhead or trinity symbol is the triangle with an eye in the middle, it is used in many different places. Since PaFal1 has such a defined H-alpha triangular shape (very very weird for a nebula), along with an Oiii 'eye' in the middle, I thought this would be fitting. 

We hope you enjoy the image!

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Five New Discoveries in Triangulum Australe, Bray Falls