Sh2-132 (2021) (Gary Imm)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cepheus (Cep) · Contains: B369 · RW Cep · Sh2-132

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Sh2-132 (2021)

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Sh2-132 (2021)

This object, nicknamed the Lion Nebula, is a complex large emission nebula located 12,000 light years away in the constellations of Cepheus and Lacerta at a declination of +56 degrees. It has so many interesting features - dark nebulae, bright stars, billowing dust clouds, emission areas, and unusually straight bright regions.

The large orange star on the left is one of the largest known stars in existence, with a diameter larger than the orbit of Jupiter. It is not certain whether this star, the hypergiant RW Cephei, is associated with the nebula or is just in the same field of view.

Two Wolf-Rayet stars, WR 152 and WR 153, are doing most of the ionization of the nebula, despite not being the brightest stars in the nebula. WR 152 is located in the center of the bluish area (OIII) in the Lion's legs, while WR 153 is located in the center of the head of the Lion.

The most fascinating aspect of this image to me is the wide arcing fronts of two expanding gas bubbles. Surprisingly, the Wolf-Rayet stars described above are not the driving mechanism for the bubbles, as they are for other familiar objects such as Thor's Helmet, the Crescent Nebula, and Sh2-308.

One large bubble appears to be driven by the star cluster Berkeley 94, centered just below the bright orange star. The other large bubble encloses two dark nebulae towards the upper right, LDN 1150 and LDN 1154. It seems to me that the latter bubble could be driven by the apparent star cluster just to the left of these dark nebulae, but I could find no evidence in the literature that this grouping of stars is even a cluster.

Texas Astronomy
Narrowband imaging
Takahashi Refractors
Fine Art Astrophotography
Sharpless2 Objects
ASI 6200 MM Pro
The refractors!
CMOS Imagers
Cloudy Nights

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4273092
PixInsight job	7HJIOUI80O3XHFCUW6CLCENYBRFHWG8F
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	22h17m42s.739
RA (top/left)	22h24m18s.685
RA (top/right)	22h11m10s.431
RA (bottom/right)	22h11m19s.981
RA (bottom/left)	22h24m01s.300

Dec (center)	+55°54′04″.20
Dec (top/left)	+56°33′06″.52
Dec (top/right)	+56°33′56″.25
Dec (bottom/right)	+55°13′42″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	+55°12′54″.32

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Sh2-132 (2021)

Sh2-132 (2021)

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Sh2-132 (2021)

Sh2-132 (2021)

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