SH2-129 and Ou4: flying bat and giant squid nebula (Götz Golla)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)

SH2-129 and Ou4: flying bat and giant squid nebula, Götz Golla

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SH2-129 and Ou4: flying bat and giant squid nebula

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SH2-129 and Ou4: flying bat and giant squid nebula

It is a great pleasure to publish this image of SH2-129. I took the image in September 2021, but had great diffculties with the flatfield correction of the OIII channel. It turned out that instead of doing complicated things with SHORTDARKS and flats taken with the OIII-Filter, just using an unfiltered flat and subtracting only the bias from the flat did a perfect job.
So even thought this might not be the best ever image of SH2-129 and Ou4, I am delighted that it is coming out so well after so many days of researching and processing.

The blue squid nebula Ou4 is embedded in SH2-129, the red flying bat nebula. Ou4 is quite a remarkable object not only due to its beauty and faintness. It is a bipolar outflow only discovered in 2011 by French astronomer Nicolas Outters. There is a nice article in Astronomy & Astrophysics about it discussing its origin and physical properties:
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2014/10/aa22718-13/aa22718-13.html

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Description: Reprocessed image. Stars were first removed, then GHS was applied to the blue and green channels. Then stars were put back.

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SH2-129 and Ou4: flying bat and giant squid nebula

SH2-129 and Ou4: flying bat and giant squid nebula

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SH2-129 and Ou4: flying bat and giant squid nebula

SH2-129 and Ou4: flying bat and giant squid nebula

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