This planetary nebula is located 6000 light years away in the constellation of Aquila at a declination of -3 degrees. It spans 50 arc-seconds in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 1.4 light years, and has a magnitude of 17.2.
I like the diamond-shaped double ring structure of this nebula. The HII signal is much stronger than the OIII signal for this PN. The progenitor star could be one of the 3 stars shown in the central nebula but their orange color doesn’t look quite right for that.
It can be hard to determine whether uniquely shaped objects such as this one are a planetary nebula or an emission nebula. This object has been studied somewhat but its nature is still a mystery. The distance shown above is only an estimate and correlates with the view that this is a PN. An alternative view is that it is an HII emission nebula, like
Sh2-266 or
Gum 52, in which case it would be located much further away.
Comments