Sunday, April 19, 2020

tried for K 2-4 (Halifax)

As I considered an interesting target for Burke-Gaffney Observatory, I noticed K 2-4 in Virgo from SkyTools. It is a large planetary nebula, PK 275+72.1 or ARO 35, in the planning software. I couldn't reference the object by the BGO designations so I targeted the nearby star Tycho 00876-0992 1.

I believe the K is for Kohoutek.

The luminance data was screwed up.

area centred on Tycho 00876-0992 1 in the blue filter

Blue only, 60 seconds subexposures, 5 stacked shots. FITS Liberator, GIMP. North is up; east is left.

I don't see anything. A large 11.5' circular object is shown in the software slightly left or east of the star in the centre of the image. Nope. Nothing in the red or green filters. Is this real? A catalogue error?

Not to be confused with Abell 35 in Hydra, a object many consider is not a planetary...

The brightest star in the image is HD 107056. Again above and right of this star, I do not see a big planetary.

I do see the little oval galaxy IC 3107!

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When I was looking for alternate designations for the object, I stumbled across a post in Cloudy Nights by redbetter from 2 Mar '17.
In my original copy of Uranometria there is a similarly large planetary listed near Markarian's chain.  However, this one, PK 275+72.1, is either mis-plotted or is not real.  I scouted it and could not find it at the coordinates (or search) in Wikisky.  I didn't waste time on it in the field.
So, looks like an error.

I tried wikisky.org and got a blank screen.

No listing in Telescopius.

Nothing shows in Stellarium. Neither does the IC object appear.

Nothing shows in Aladin, in a DSS2 colour plane.

TheSky 6 shows a small conglomeration of stars. When I click in the middle the Object Information box pops up and says: PLN 275+72.1. Uh huh.

Found a discussion in forum.astronomie.de but their analyses suggests an error.

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