This is a tiny but intensely bright planetary nebula that sits in the constellation Cygnus (location shown in a wide-field image __HERE__ on CN). This may be the most widely studied planetary nebula because it is believed to be very young with an age of only a few hundred years (or, at most, a few thousand). Consequently, it also has a physical size that is much less than most planetary nebula (perhaps around 0.2 light years in diameter).
In fact, it is seldom imaged by amateur astrophotographers because of its meager angular size, less than one fifth that of the famous Ring Nebula (M57). The nebula itself has a dimension of 17" x 12" which means that it appears at about the same size as the disk of the planet Saturn (not counting Saturn's rings).
Imaged using a Takahashi FC-100DZ four inch refractor coupled to a Tele Vue 2X Powermate and an uncooled ASI678MC "planetary" camera (there are additional capture details in the image captions and note that each sub was exposed for just 2 seconds). Image capture with N.I.N.A. (with no guiding but while using a direct dither) and processed with PixInsight and Photoshop 2024.
The reproduction scale in the below image is 0.4 arc seconds per pixel (near to critical sampling with a 4" scope) and this is a crop from the full frame of the ASI678MC camera. The FWHM on the linear master was 1.29 arc seconds which I think is very good for a 4" refractor in broadband with a one-shot-color camera. The field of view (width) is around 10 arc minutes. The limiting magnitude in this reproduction is somewhere between 17 and 17.5 (although a few 18th magnitude stars are just barely detectable if you know where to look).
The relatively bright orange-red star that is to the middle right and slightly above the nebula and that appears to be a double star has a primary magnitude of 11.9 and a component separation of 2.6 arc second (according to GAIA measurements). It is also possible to see the first diffraction ring on this star (and several others), a detail that is seldom recorded in DSO images.
Thanks for looking and C&C welcomed.
Attached Thumbnails
Edited by james7ca, 21 September 2023 - 04:53 AM.
