Placidus
12-03-2018, 02:11 PM
Just north of NGC 3572 is the Burst Bubble nebula. It has very rarely been photographed.
The ESO have a very nice and detailed image of the southern part (https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1347a/), close to and including NGC 3572. Their image is upside down compared with ours. There is a nice overview (http://www.pbase.com/takman2/image/133481967) of the burst bubble in H-alpha by John Glossop, rotated 90 degrees to ours.
Three years ago, we had a crack at it, and decided that this southern region looked like Vulcan's Anvil: A glowing anvil is being struck by an invisible hammer, and the impact has melted the edge of the anvil, sending splashes of molten copper, in the shape of dripping bats and other lost souls. Our annotated thumbnail shows some of these.
We've since added another three nights of data, with an overlapping mini-mosaic to explore more to the north, for a total of 34 hrs.
The full sized image is here (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Star-Forming-Regions/i-PS2S4Sr/0/01d0cd2e/O/H%20Emerald%20Firebird%202.jpg).
The nebula as a whole is in the form of a burst bubble, open at the top, like a ruptured Graffian follicle perhaps. The bubble is much brighter at the bottom, near NGC 3572. Perhaps it is just proximity to the light source, or perhaps the material is thicker there.
On close examination, and continuing both the Vulcan and Egg themes, the bubble transpires to be the body of an Emerald Firebird, a kind of flammable emu, with very long neck, a star forming one beady eye, and extremely obvious legs and claws, which we've labelled in the diagram.
Peering over the firebird's shoulder one can kinda make out the deformed snout and one ear of an extraneous fox. The firebird had better watch out, because we get a lot of these at Placidus, and they ate our chooks.
At the extreme left hand edge of the image is an interesting blue nebula, rich in OIII. In the dripping mess from Vulcan's Anvil is another very small but intensely bright round nebula. There are a few good Bok globules and cometary knots toward the centre of the image.
Aspen CG16M on 20 inch PlaneWave on MI-760 fork. Green: H-alpha 11 hrs, Blue: OIII 11 hrs, Red: SII 8 hrs, and NII 4 hrs, all in 1hr subs. 0.55 sec arc per pixel. Image height about 48 min arc, north up.
No flats were used, because Andor seem to have done a fantastic job of cleaning the sensor, and we've not gotten around to doing more flats.
We were treated to unusually good seeing (FWHM around 3.5 sec arc), very clear skies, and moon 50% to 25% illuminated.
Hope your Firebird-spotting hats are working well. Some Stravinsky might help.
Very best,
MnT
The ESO have a very nice and detailed image of the southern part (https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1347a/), close to and including NGC 3572. Their image is upside down compared with ours. There is a nice overview (http://www.pbase.com/takman2/image/133481967) of the burst bubble in H-alpha by John Glossop, rotated 90 degrees to ours.
Three years ago, we had a crack at it, and decided that this southern region looked like Vulcan's Anvil: A glowing anvil is being struck by an invisible hammer, and the impact has melted the edge of the anvil, sending splashes of molten copper, in the shape of dripping bats and other lost souls. Our annotated thumbnail shows some of these.
We've since added another three nights of data, with an overlapping mini-mosaic to explore more to the north, for a total of 34 hrs.
The full sized image is here (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Star-Forming-Regions/i-PS2S4Sr/0/01d0cd2e/O/H%20Emerald%20Firebird%202.jpg).
The nebula as a whole is in the form of a burst bubble, open at the top, like a ruptured Graffian follicle perhaps. The bubble is much brighter at the bottom, near NGC 3572. Perhaps it is just proximity to the light source, or perhaps the material is thicker there.
On close examination, and continuing both the Vulcan and Egg themes, the bubble transpires to be the body of an Emerald Firebird, a kind of flammable emu, with very long neck, a star forming one beady eye, and extremely obvious legs and claws, which we've labelled in the diagram.
Peering over the firebird's shoulder one can kinda make out the deformed snout and one ear of an extraneous fox. The firebird had better watch out, because we get a lot of these at Placidus, and they ate our chooks.
At the extreme left hand edge of the image is an interesting blue nebula, rich in OIII. In the dripping mess from Vulcan's Anvil is another very small but intensely bright round nebula. There are a few good Bok globules and cometary knots toward the centre of the image.
Aspen CG16M on 20 inch PlaneWave on MI-760 fork. Green: H-alpha 11 hrs, Blue: OIII 11 hrs, Red: SII 8 hrs, and NII 4 hrs, all in 1hr subs. 0.55 sec arc per pixel. Image height about 48 min arc, north up.
No flats were used, because Andor seem to have done a fantastic job of cleaning the sensor, and we've not gotten around to doing more flats.
We were treated to unusually good seeing (FWHM around 3.5 sec arc), very clear skies, and moon 50% to 25% illuminated.
Hope your Firebird-spotting hats are working well. Some Stravinsky might help.
Very best,
MnT