Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  Sh2-261
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SH2-261 - Lower's Nebula, Kurt Zeppetello
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SH2-261 - Lower's Nebula

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SH2-261 - Lower's Nebula, Kurt Zeppetello
Powered byPixInsight

SH2-261 - Lower's Nebula

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Description

This colorful object is known as Lower's Nebula or SH2-261. The nebula is a hydrogen alpha (Ha) region about 3,200 light-years away in Orion, specifically where the hand meets the club. The Orion constellation has so many neat deep sky objects in addition to the most commonly imaged objects. There is only one page of images of beautiful nebula currently on Astrobin, however, images are increasing quickly as more people discover it. It is named after amateur astronomer Harold Lower and his son Charles who discovered this nebula in 1939 in their home of San Diego.

It was hard to find information on this object although Jens Zippel Lower's

(https://www.astrobin.com/322218/0/), who took a great image of this a couple years ago, talked about the interesting location of the nebula. Apparently it on the outermost edge of the Milkyway, on the border of the galactic region between the Orion and Perseus arm.

One of my favorite parts is the lower portion where the gas seems to be concentrated most and it has the sharpest detail. I cropped the image to remove the two largest stars as I tried to keep them in the image but they ended up being more of a nuisance than anything else. I did not crop any further as I wanted to keep the faint nebulosity off the top and bottom of the main portion.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/RXhwTIy3R5Y

Link to Video of Capturing & Processing

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