This
Astrobin Debut Object is a planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scutum at a declination of -10 degrees. Martin Griffith’s “Planetary Nebula” book says that this is a magnitude 20 PN, which seems quite dim but then again it is a very small object. It spans only 16 arc-seconds in our apparent view. No distance information is available for this object, but if it is a standard size PN (2 light year diameter), then it is located about 25,000 light years away.
This PN is unusual because of its squarish shape. It remind me of
Minkowski 3-3. My guess is that we are looking at a bipolar PN from an inclined (almost end-on) perspective, with the axis running from top left to lower right.
This PN was discovered by the astronomer Dr. Rudolph Minkowski. His work at Mt. Wilson used up to 100 inch scopes to more than double the number of planetary nebulae known at the time. The Minkowski PN catalog was extracted from 3 papers he published in the 1940s. Although he didn’t number the objects and formally assemble them as a catalog, we now refer to the objects of the three papers by the designators M 1-xx, M 2-xx, and M 3-xx. A fourth catalog (M4-xx) was later added from his observations, for a total of 207 PN. The brighter and larger objects are generally in the first two catalogues.
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