Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  HD112299  ·  HD112313
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LoTr 5 Longmore-Tritton 5, Curtis MacDonald
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LoTr 5 Longmore-Tritton 5

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LoTr 5 Longmore-Tritton 5, Curtis MacDonald
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LoTr 5 Longmore-Tritton 5

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Description

LoTr 5 is a large, faint planetary nebula in the constellation of Coma Berenices. In 2018, its parallax was measured by Gaia, giving a distance of about 1,650 light-years (510 parsecs).

The nebula is most commonly referred to as LoTr 5, short for Longmore-Tritton 5. It was discovered in 1980 by A. J. Longmore and S. B. Tritton, who found the nebula on photographic plates taken at the UK Schmidt Telescope.[7]

As of 2018, LoTr 5 has the highest galactic latitude of any known planetary nebula, being only 1.5 degrees away from the galactic north pole. Scientists noted this because if the distance of the nebula were found to be greater than a few hundred parsecs, then the gas from the nebula would be expanding into the galactic halo, where there is little interaction with the interstellar medium.

LoTr 5 is one of the largest planetary nebulae known, with a radius of 1.8 light-years (0.55 parsecs). It mostly emits light at a wavelength of 500.7 nm, corresponding to a doubly ionized oxygen line.

LoTr 5 is not spherical, but is instead a bipolar nebula. Many bipolar and non-spherical nebulae are known to exist, but it is the processes that cause planetary nebulae to get their shapes are not clear, and have been the subject of much debate. However, the "binary hypothesis" posits that binary stars are more likely to produce non-spherical nebulae. For LoTr 5, the binary system likely played a role in shaping the nebula.

The central system at LoTr 5 has been known to be binary since 1983. At the center there is an evolved G-type star that is often classified as a giant star or a subgiant, as well as a hot O-type subdwarf or white dwarf that is responsible for ionizing the nebula. The subdwarf is one of the hottest stars known,with an effective temperature of about 150,000 K. The two stars orbit each very slowly; with an orbital period of 2,689 days, this is one of the longest periods for a binary system within a planetary nebula.

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LoTr 5 Longmore-Tritton 5, Curtis MacDonald