First ACP Image - RCW 79

Well, this is my first ACP image. It’s a little wonky, (I knocked my collimation out while cleaning) but I’m still over the moon with what ACP has allowed. The image was taken from Melbourne, Australia, under very bad light pollution and endless cloud. Late at night, the little robot that could managed to get several 1800 sec subs while I was sleeping. Next task – collimating.

RCW 79 is a cosmic bubble of gas and dust that forms a ring around a central ionising star. The nebula is around 1.7 million year old and has grown to a size of about 70 light years across. The object can be found in the constellation of Centaurus, and is estimated to be 17 thousand light years away.

Looking to the lower third of the image in the centre, there is a wonderful Planetary Nebula. I couldn’t find a reference to this in my charts or in within TheSkyX. The closest reference I could find is PLN 308 +0.1. But this planetary is supposed to be located almost centre of this image. The planetary nebula in this image is between the objects GSC 8991:970 and GSC 8991:1838.

How do you guys identify objects like the planetary neb in this image?

Link to larger version.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/978070...7646565068452/

Terry

Terry, This is a beautiful image for your first effort. I almost like the B/W images better because they remind me of the wonderful, large B/W images I used to see growing up at the Adler Planetarium (so long ago!). Collimation can't be too bad - the stars look round in all the corners.

Here's a possible way to identify the planetary nebula.

1. If you plate solved, use MaxIm or Visual PinPoint to open the image and grab the coordinates of that PN. They should be pretty accurate.

2. Go to SIMBAD: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/

3. Click on "by coordinates" under Queries and enter those coordinates. What comes back is a table of all identified objects within the radius (arcmin) you specified.

Let's just refer to that cute little planetary as Robison 1.

Thank you very much for that Dick. I got 13 39 53 -62 00 38 and plugged them into Simbad. There was nothing in the photo, but suggested it could be:

[PLW2012] G308.559+00.313+012.2 -- Dense core
Angular size (arcmin): 1.0 1.0

That is a fairly tiny object. That is a great site. Thank you for the help.

Terry

Terry,

I did a little image comparison with Aladin Lite, and derived the coordinates of the PN as 13 38 42.283 -61 55 50.21. (Purple cursor on ALite image.) If you plug those back in to SIMBAD coordinate query, you'll see WRAY 17-62 (PN) right at the top of the list. Then if you scroll in and out in the interactive AladinLite window, you will begin to see the ring as you get to max magnification. If you click on the hyperlink for WRAY 17-62, that will take you to the data page for the object, and that has additional links to more information - more than many people need to know.

More trivia: James D. Wray was a Ph.D. student at (U.S.) Northwestern University, whose 1966 thesis was entitled, "A study of H-alpha emission objects in the Southern Milky Way."

Thanks Colin :).

Dick, you nailed it. It has exactly the same stars. I have no idea what to do with this little guy. It's very cool.

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/si...&submit=submit

Here is a crop of WRAY 17-62, and zoomed in a little bit.

Terry

What a great image and some really interesting and usefull information.

Great post.

Neil

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Thanks Neil. Dick information was really helpful.

Terry

How fun!! Thanks to all who jumped in here with Terry!