I'm not sure why this is called the "Egg Nebula" and not the "X Nebula" - it's clearly x-shaped and bears no resemblance to an egg whatsoever. Maybe someone misspoke or misheard?
Anyway, the Egg Nebula is an eggcelent eggsample of a protoplanetary or preplanetary nebula - "a short-lived episode during a star's rapid evolution between the late asymptotic giant branch (LAGB) phase and the subsequent planetary nebula (PN) phase" [Kastner 2005].
I found it eggstremely difficult to get the detail I was looking for in this one and resorted to taking 2000 additional 5-second luminance frames at bin 1x1, which finally enabled me to record the variations in brightness along the x-shaped beams, but just barely. Other amateur imagers have managed to capture 'pulsating' differences in brightness along the clouds surrounding the central star (or stars?), but I can't seem to find that in my data. It's just a tough one - at only 45 arc seconds, I'm not too surprised. However, I'm eggceptionally happy I finally imaged it, as it's been on my list for ages. Special thanks to Sara Wager for her eggstrordinary
tutorial on creating an inset image.
This is my last image with the RC until October or November.
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