Sunday, July 17, 2016

imaged a summer snowball (Halifax)

The BGO robot imaged NGC 7662 for me. A planetary nebula in Andromeda aka the Blue Snowball and Caldwell 22. One of the RASC Finest NGCs. Sadly, there's a focus issue—bottom-left corner. Also, a satellite went through the luminance data.

RASC Finest planetary nebula the Blue Snowball luminance

Luminance only, 15 seconds subexposures, 20 stacked shots. FITS Liberator, Paint.NET. North is up; left is east.

Spotted a bunch of fuzzies in a highly stretched version...

stretched image to show the faint fuzzies

Top-left corner or north-east, there's a large canted oval galaxy. That's LEDA 2203327.

Toward the top, slightly right or north-north west, I noted a small non-round fuzz ball: LEDA 2203587.

Immediately west of the nebula is a dim small lint ball: LEDA 2200608.

Near the bottom-right corner of the image there appears to be a double or triple star. It is not noted as such in SkyTools. I'll have to look into that later.

Between this item of interest and the planetary I think I see a very dim edge-on. Also not IDed in ST3P.

South-south-west is a dim oval: LEDA 2198265.

Slightly east I think I see a dim fuzzy. Not IDed.

Due east of that there's a small faint fuzzy thing: LEDA 2197897.

Due east of 7662, south-east of the bright star is LEDA 2200851.

Actually, that star is throwing double diffraction spikes...

And there are still more than SkyTools highlighted!

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Reshot on the evening of 3 August.

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The bright tight pair of equally bright stars due north of the planetary, not circles, is the double star CHE 457.

The bright star close to the planetary, at the 10 o'clock position, is a double. Not circled. The companion is nearly directly above. HJ 1877. Curiously, SkyTools shows a star at the correct location of A but calls it GSC 03238-1111; the software plots A in the middle of the Snowball, in fact!

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Wikipedia link: NGC 7662.

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