IC 4592 - A Blue Horsehead over Kanab (Timothy Martin)

IC 4592 - A Blue Horsehead over Kanab

On a recent trip to Kanab, Utah, I was able to capture this over a couple of clear nights. It's been on my list for a long time, but I've not had an opportunity to go after it until now. I thought this was an appropriate target given that we were staying in our RV at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary--one of the largest animal rescue operations in the country. If any of you have an RV and are looking for a place to stay in the area in order to visit Zion, Bryce, and the North Rim, I highly recommend this place. It has great RV accommodations in beautiful Angel Canyon, which has lots to see and do besides just heading off to one of the nearby national parks.

One really interesting thing about the Blue Horsehead that I only discovered after I took this picture is that the "star" in the eye of the horsehead, Nu Scorpii, is actually one of only two septuple star system that have ever been discovered. The star system comprises two sets of triple star systems orbiting around a center of gravity with the seventh star circling the entire group. The two sets of three are 41" apart from our vantage, so by my very possibly faulty math, that puts them around 10 billion miles apart--about three times the distance from the sun to Pluto. So it seems unlikely that any planet around a star in Nu Scorpii would ever experience nighttime.

This posting leaves me in an unusual position: I have absolutely no other new data in the pipeline. The weather and the nascent transition to Deep Sky West has foreclosed the possibility of starting any other new projects since early May. But I intend to make up for this dry spell starting in about mid July when the first of three new scopes should be operational in Santa Fe. And I still have my small travel rig that I can deploy here at home once the weather clears.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7881808
PixInsight job	YABPZOHTHR23TE6REQA1YXEC9TGYCMNW
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	16h18m22s.80
RA (top/left)	16h07m10s.14
RA (top/right)	16h29m22s.46
RA (bottom/right)	16h29m18s.76
RA (bottom/left)	16h07m34s.23

Dec (center)	-19°24′41″.1
Dec (top/left)	-21°10′19″.6
Dec (top/right)	-21°13′23″.2
Dec (bottom/right)	-17°36′39″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	-17°33′06″.9

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