Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Dorado (Dor)  ·  Contains:  HD38942
Henize 70 | Three Clusters, a Super Bubble, and a Great Story, Kevin Morefield
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Henize 70 | Three Clusters, a Super Bubble, and a Great Story

Henize 70 | Three Clusters, a Super Bubble, and a Great Story, Kevin Morefield
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Henize 70 | Three Clusters, a Super Bubble, and a Great Story

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THE OBJECT

Henize 70 resides in the LMC and seems to be placed in a field of star clusters.  I've cropped out all but three to focus attention on the main attraction.  The emission nebula here is classified as a Super Bubble - expansive gas  blown by massive, hot stars and supernova explosions.  This had not been classified as an SNR and certainly not a PN.  Structurally, there is an OIII envelope that is fairly well defined.  The Ha and SII seem to arise from the same structures.   The well defined portion of the Ha is somewhat inside the OIII envelope, thought it spills out loosely in many locations.  The outer OIII + inner Ha shell is reminiscent of WR bubbles like the Crescent Nebula and SNR bubbles like CTB 1.  But in those the Ha and SII is much less similar in structure to each other.

KARL HENIZE

Henize, born in Ohio in 1926, lived a life that warranted an extensive Wikipedia page - one that does not mention his published catalog of 221 emission nebulae of the LMC!  After WW2 ended just a bit too soon for is naval commission, he received a BA in Math in 1947, MA in Astronomy in 1948, and PHD in Astronomy in 1954.  After the PHD he worked at Mount Wilson, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and in the Northwestern University's Astronomy department.  

In 1963, at age 37, he applied to join NASA's first scientist-astronaut program but was denied due to being two years over the age limit.  In 1967 the age limit was removed and he joined the program.  The Apollo program was canceled before his scheduled flight on Apollo 20 or 21 came up.  He lists as support crew on at least one Skylab mission in 1973.  Will our hero ever get to Space?  Yes; on the Space Shuttle Challenger he finally realized his (and probably all of our) dreams.  This was in 1985 at age 59 years!  He was seated on Story Musgrave's right hand - Musgrave who had been on the spacewalk team to fix the Hubble Telescope's initial astigmatism.  You think they might have had a topic or two to discuss?  After almost 8 days and 127 Earth orbits on this mission, Henize was Earth-bound for good.  Karl is second from the left below:



Where does one go from there?  In 1993, at age 66, Henize joined a research group that was scaling Mount Everest.  The plan was to test bodily tissue reaction to the increasing radiation as they ascended the mountain.  The data would be used in the planning for future long space missions.  Unfortunately, He suffered high altitude pulmonary edema and is buried at ~24,000 foot elevation on Everest.

Many thanks to Mark Hanson for bringing this story to my attention here: https://www.hansonastronomy.com/hineze-70-in-lmc
Karl Henize's Wikipedia page is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Gordon_Henize


THE PROCESSING

The color mix is a bit odd for me.  I ended up using:

Red = S
Green = f*(S*.7+H*.3)+~f*O 
Blue = O

f= stretched O master

I was planning to use a more traditional dynamic SHO blend where the factor would also be used to mix SII and Ha for the Red channel.  But I left only the SII in for Red by accident and liked it best.  This is because it makes the Red more different from what's in the Green channel since Ha is not in both.  So we get the yellows where the OIII and Ha are both present and the Reds where it's mostly SII.  The predominantly blue areas are where OIII is stronger than the Ha.  

The stars are RGB.  I used 2 minute subs which helped keep the really bright little cluster stars from saturating and blending together.

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    Henize 70 | Three Clusters, a Super Bubble, and a Great Story, Kevin Morefield
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Henize 70 | Three Clusters, a Super Bubble, and a Great Story, Kevin Morefield