Nebula · Cetus

Nébuleuse du Crâne

A planetary nebula, the envelope of gas thrown off by a star of medium mass at the end of its life.

In the catalogue, the thumbnail for this object is cropped in on its subject, and its curve lifted slightly, so that it can be seen at card size. This view here is the whole photograph, as I produced it.

It is about 1,810 light-years away in Cetus. What is left of the star is a white dwarf, at the centre of a triple system. The bubble of gas is 2.1 light-years across, for 4.6 apparent arcminutes. Like planetary nebulae in general, it emits on narrow lines, and that is exactly what the dual-band filter knows how to work with. Its outer envelope, though, is faint: the exposures have to pile up for a long time.

Source: Wikipédia en français, NGC 246. A figure wrong? Report it.

9m 1 shot

0 towards 22h 12m · cumulative integration on this object

Temps d'intégration : the total exposure time, the sum of every exposure stacked on an object.