Abell 12, surprisingly bright

[tornado33]

Here is planetary nebula Abell 12, in Orion, looking like a ghost image next to a mag 4 star. Its odd that Abell put this on the list as normally Abell planetaries are VERY low surface brightness faint objects. This is so bright it readily showed up in 30 sec test images @ISO1600

The actual image here is
5x5 mins ISO400. UHCS filter, MPCC. Modded 350D ,10 inch f5.6, hand guided off axis by usign the Q guider to put a star on the screen and manually making corrections, 0.3 sec updates. One stoppage 1/2 way through the run because of cloud patches. Im surprised the faint stars are as sharp as they are as the guidestar was literally boiling in iffy seeing. Some gust of wind jiggled things around too.
There is a full frame reduced size, and a full res. crop image
I normally do 10 minute subs but I wanted to avoid too much saturation from the bright star, Im lucky my diffraction spike didnt cut the planetary in half too

Processed with dark, flats as usual in IRIS and finished in PS
Scott

[AJames]

Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

[theodog (Jeff)]

Good one Scott.
I asume that the faint red ring is internal reflection?
One for a steady night.
Well done.

[tornado33]

Thanks
Yep theres an internal reflection there, I often get that from bright stars
Scott

[Ric]

A wonderful capture Scott.

Well done

[EzyStyles (Eric)]

great shot scott, where abouts is this? is there a IC/NGC number?

[sjastro]

That's a great image Scott.

Well done

Steven

[tornado33]

Thanks all
Its known also by the designation PNG198.6-06.3
Its at ra 6 02 22 dec +9 39 16
Scott

[Dennis]

Wow Scott – that looks one tough object and you have done a great job in revealing it so well. Well done.

Cheers

Dennis

[glenc (Glen)]

It must be a difficult object visually too with that bright mag 4.4+6.0 (dist 0.36") double star mu Ori next to it.
Abell 12, mag 12.4 and 37" across, is less than 3 degrees from Betelgeuse.
I found this description by Steve Coe at:http://www.saguaroastro.org/content/obsnotes/ORION.htm
"PK198- 6.1 Abell 12 Sentinel S=7 T=9 13" 220X Pretty faint, pretty small, round, little brighter middle. Just seen at 220X in the glow of Mu ORI. 330X helps the contrast, the UHC filter helps a lot, the glow is much larger and more contrasty with the filter."
He used a 13" scope.
Details on mu Ori are here: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002AJ....123.1723F

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Another interesting little stranger from Scotty, thanks, always interesting to see what you've captured

Mike

[glenc (Glen)]

The binary star next to Abell 12, mu Ori AB, (A2715, mag 4.4+6.0) has a separation of 0.36" in 2008 and pa of 23.6 according to: http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/orb6/orb6ephem.html
A 16" scope should be able to split it.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

That's very cool Scott!

Cheers, Marcus