Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  Sh2-188
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Sh2-188 - Profile of an Alien, Jeffrey K Lovelace

Sh2-188 - Profile of an Alien

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Sh2-188 - Profile of an Alien, Jeffrey K Lovelace

Sh2-188 - Profile of an Alien

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Data Acquisition from 2019-09-26 until 2019-11-25

DSO Color Mapping: SH-HO-OH with NII Luminance; RGB Stars

Original Image (Pix) Scale: 0.54

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The planetary nebula Sh2-188 has received many descriptive names over the years: the Dolphin, the Leaping Dolphin, the Shrimp, and the Firefox Nebula, among others. Most of these names come from shots presented conforming to the geocentric notion of 0° rotation relative to our tiny planet's rotational axis in which we arbitrarily call the "north" pole "up." However, there is no "up" in space, so I like to disregard the standard presentation.

As others have noted, when shown with this rotation, it looks like a head, and it looks to me like the head of a being from the Mos Eisley Cantina. If you see something different, please post it (my wife sees an eyeball).

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This scope is located at Sierra Remote Observatory. I personally configured and installed this scope and make regular trips to SRO to perform maintenance and upgrades, with the occasional expert assistance of SRO's Sam and Evan. When not on site, I operate the scope nightly from home using a remote desktop application.

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Sh2-188 - Profile of an Alien, Jeffrey K Lovelace