NGC 1360

I shot this target a few years back, however, I was plagued with guiding issues. This attempt has more broadband light in an attempt to get more stars within the nebula.

 

This large beautiful planetary nebula can be found in the constellation Fornax. Its common name, “The Robin’s Egg Nebula” describes the object perfectly. It looks like a Robins egg floating in space. NGC 1360 is a typical evolved planetary nebula. The term evolved means “aging”, and that the planetary nebula does not contain any obvious shell morphology. Contrasting this, if you compare this with another planetary nebula, i.e., “The Skull Nebula” you will find defined well-marked boundaries and symmetry present in younger Planetary Nebula (PN). NGC 1360 is fairly diffuse and showing areas interacting with the interstellar medium.

 

The interesting colour is caused by the excitation of oxygen from its hot central star. In fact, the central star is known to be a binary star system consisting of two evolved white dwarf stars.

 

Reddish jet like glows located along the longer axis are believed to have been ejected from the original star before its final collapse. In time, everything will fade, with just the white dwarf in the centre remaining. It will take several billion years to finally cool off.

 

Instruments:

Telescope: 10" Ritchey-Chrétien RCOS

Camera: SBIG STL-11000 Mono

Mount: Astro-Physics AP-900

Focal Length: 2310.00 mm

Pixel size: 9.00 um

Resolution: 0.82 arcsec/pix

 

Exposure Details:

Lum 52 X 900

Red 57 X 450

Green 40 X 450

Blue 55 X 450

OIII 35 X 1800

Ha 20 X 1800

 

Total Exposure: 59.5 hours

 

Thanks for looking

 

Done