Blinking Planetary Nebula (NGC 6826)
Located at a distance of about 3,600 light years, the Blinking Planetary consists of a central star (magnitude 10.4) and surrounding nebulosity from when the central star went nova. It is called "blinking" because to the visual observer, the nebula appears to blink as the eye moves from focusing directly at the bright central star to looking more peripherally, when the nebulosity is more easily seen.
Distinctive to this particularly planetary nebula are two "fliers", to the side, that appear to be shock waves from ejecta of more recent explosion, probably within the last 1,000 years or so.
While bright, this is a difficult object to image because of the subtle contrasts within the nebulosity and its small size (total diamter is only 27 arc-secs). The size of this image is approximately 20.7 arc-min wide by 13.8 arc-min tall. The nebula is about 100 arc-sec in diameter.
Object: NGC 6826 (Blinking Planetary Nebula)
Date: September 28, 2013
Location: Rancho Santa Fe Observatory
Optics: Celestron C9.25" with f/6.3 focal reducer
Guiding: B&L 4" SCT piggybacked with PhD software
Camera: Nikon D5100 at Prime Focus
Exposure: 437 6-sec exposures at ISO640*
Stacking: DeepSky Stacker with flats and darks
Processing: PixInsight for Background Neutralization and PhotoShop CS6
* In order to avoid saturation of the central star and nebulosity the high number of shorter exposures provides superior raw data to longer exposures.
Blinking Planetary Nebula (NGC 6826)
Located at a distance of about 3,600 light years, the Blinking Planetary consists of a central star (magnitude 10.4) and surrounding nebulosity from when the central star went nova. It is called "blinking" because to the visual observer, the nebula appears to blink as the eye moves from focusing directly at the bright central star to looking more peripherally, when the nebulosity is more easily seen.
Distinctive to this particularly planetary nebula are two "fliers", to the side, that appear to be shock waves from ejecta of more recent explosion, probably within the last 1,000 years or so.
While bright, this is a difficult object to image because of the subtle contrasts within the nebulosity and its small size (total diamter is only 27 arc-secs). The size of this image is approximately 20.7 arc-min wide by 13.8 arc-min tall. The nebula is about 100 arc-sec in diameter.
Object: NGC 6826 (Blinking Planetary Nebula)
Date: September 28, 2013
Location: Rancho Santa Fe Observatory
Optics: Celestron C9.25" with f/6.3 focal reducer
Guiding: B&L 4" SCT piggybacked with PhD software
Camera: Nikon D5100 at Prime Focus
Exposure: 437 6-sec exposures at ISO640*
Stacking: DeepSky Stacker with flats and darks
Processing: PixInsight for Background Neutralization and PhotoShop CS6
* In order to avoid saturation of the central star and nebulosity the high number of shorter exposures provides superior raw data to longer exposures.