Abell 39: Soap-bubble planetary (Howard Trottier)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Hercules (Her) · Contains: PK047+42.1

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Abell 39: Soap-bubble planetary

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Abell 39: Soap-bubble planetary

I've been longing to image this beautiful planetary nebula for many years, owing to its nearly perfect spherical shape, and the illusion of depth that this creates in the mind's eye, along with its stunning blue colour. I like to call it a "soap-bubble" planetary, an impression suggested by its many patches of varying brightness and transparency. 🤓 Remarkably, two distinctive galaxies are clearly resolved through the nebula.

It turned out to be much harder to process this target than I had anticipated, despite the 21+ hours of integration time that I devoted to it, since the nebula's subtle brightness variations were exceedingly difficult to bring out without being overwhelmed by noise. The data were acquired on five consecutive nights, June 10-14, with just under 11 hours in luminance and just over 10 hours in RGB. To optimize the final appearance, I downsampled the full-scale image by 75%, with a final plate scale of about 0.63"/pixel, and a field-of-view of about 28'x22'.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
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Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
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Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4717331
PixInsight job	DIKRVNXIBISPE9IZF4N6A5Y6J1GUU3T6
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	16h27m33s.744
RA (top/left)	16h28m37s.232
RA (top/right)	16h26m30s.656
RA (bottom/right)	16h26m30s.454
RA (bottom/left)	16h28m36s.607

Dec (center)	+27°54′33″.69
Dec (top/left)	+28°05′20″.56
Dec (top/right)	+28°05′27″.80
Dec (bottom/right)	+27°43′44″.80
Dec (bottom/left)	+27°43′37″.95

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Abell 39: Soap-bubble planetary

Abell 39: Soap-bubble planetary

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Abell 39: Soap-bubble planetary

Abell 39: Soap-bubble planetary

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