Wow, I've been so tied up with actual work I have finally had the opportunity to finish this one that I shot back in September...

This image is of a very unusual binary system in Aquarius. According to various sources, the Wikipedia entry for this image, information from https://astrodrudis.com/r-aquarii-cederblad-211/, and the sciencealert.com entry about this subject, this appears to be a binary system made up of a Mira type variable red giant and a white dwarf. The mechanism seems to include the process by which the white dwarf accretes material from the red giant which settles upon its surface. This occasionally triggers a thermonuclear explosion that throws this material outward into space. It is thought that a big event like this occurred around 930 AD that may have created the bulk of the surrounding nebula which is Cederblad 211. This Mira variable has an approximately 390 day period and it's magnitude varies from about 5.2 to 12.4. Quite a remarkable system indeed...

I have wanted to image this for a while and have tried with little success in the past. This time I think I was able to get enough good data to process an image. This object is quite low in our skies at my location and culminates at 42 degrees which does not allow for a lot of time to image in a given night. I did a bit of OIII, quite a bit of Ha and some straight luminance to put this together. I used the Steve Cannistra NB synthetic green scheme to put the data together.

There is only a couple of images of this here on Astrobin, I would have thought there would be more but I find this subject to be very interesting. This subject is only 2'x1' in apparent size and I kind of wish I had a bigger instrument and more altitude to image it , it's probably a great target for someone in the Southern Hemisphere with a telescope with more reach.

In any case, I hope you like this one and as always, comments and criticism encouraged!

CS and good health...