The first object on my "Namibian list" is the NGC 6302 Planetary Nebula, also known as the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula (I prefer the latter name and will use it later).

First, a few words about the object itself - NGC 6302 is a bipolar planetary nebula located in the constellation Scorpius. Its structure is one of the most complex ever observed in planetary nebulae.
The earliest known analyses of the nebula were conducted by Edward E. Barnard, who drew and described it in 1907, although it had been listed in the NGC catalog since 1882. The next time it was examined in detail was in 2009 when the Hubble Space Telescope pointed its camera there.

The spectrum of NGC 6302 reveals that its central star is one of the hottest known stars, with a surface temperature exceeding 250,000 degrees Celsius, suggesting that the star from which it formed must have been very massive. The central star, a white dwarf, was identified in 2009 using the improved Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Currently, this star has a mass of about 0.64 times that of the Sun. It is surrounded by a dense equatorial disk composed of gas and dust. This dense disk is believed to have caused the formation of the bipolar structure of the star's outflows, similar to an hourglass. This bipolar structure exhibits features such as ionization walls, knots, and sharp edges of the lobes.

NGC 6302 is rich in various elements such as hydrogen, helium, oxygen, nitrogen, and others. The image of NGC 6302, especially the one from the Hubble Telescope, is extremely impressive, with bright and colorful structures that reveal intense physical processes occurring in this distant object. It is an important research object for astronomers who are trying to understand the evolution of massive stars and the processes of matter formation and propagation in the interstellar space.

When I was heading to Hakos Farm in Namibia, my plan was to use the available SW 405/1800 Dobsonian telescope with a GoTo system, along with my Player One Uranus-C camera (IMX 585). Thanks to the help of my friend Mateusz Kalisz (the creator of the Astrolife YT channel), everything went very well, for which I am immensely grateful. As is tradition, to complete the project, I also collected a spectrum, this time using my completely independent setup - TS APO 65Q + ASI 294MC with an SA 200 filter. The spectrum collected with my filter, being a relatively low-resolution measurement, did not unequivocally show all the lines seen in professional images, but I am still quite satisfied.