SH2-308 first attempt

[gvanhau]

Hello
This is my first attempt to this object.
It is a 2x3 pannel mosaic in Ha to red, Ha+OIII to green and OIII to blue.
Each pannel consisting about 12 images Ha + 12 images OIII, 900 sec each bin x 2. with my Atik 383L, Astrodon 5nm Nb filters . (~48H expo)
Vixen VMC260 telescope @ F/7.1 on top of my Mi250 mount.

The image is still somewhat noisy, so I am plannig to add more info next year.

Here higher res:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/astro_gvanhau/13552371885/sizes/h/

Comments welcome.

Geert

[dvj]

A little noise never hurt anyone. Excellent work you have done there.

[Screwdriverone]

Nice one Geert,

It looks a bit like a cosmic onion :)

Very interesting result, keep at it.

Cheers


Chris

[strongmanmike]

Hey that's excellent even with the noise, it's a really cool object this :thumbsup:

Mike

[telecasterguru]

Looks fine to me, very interesting.

[gvanhau]

Thank you All.

Yeah, I was thinking on a blowfish

Geert

[gregbradley]

Looking pretty good. I started to image this but its rather a large object and ideally needs a semi widefield setup. But you managed to get the whole object in that view.

Greg.

[atalas]

Love bubbles in space!good work.

[madbadgalaxyman]

Oooh what a pretty object.

It is a Wolf-Rayet nebula.

Here is some info:
http://galaxymap.org/cat/view/sharpless/308

Here is an image by Don Goldman:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090423.html

Here is an excellent page about Sharpless and his catalog of nebulae, with plenty of pics:
http://www.sharplesscatalog.com/Default.aspx

I think that the Sharpless page is a good example of a memorial to a significant professional astronomer. There are not enough of these on the internet.

Unfortunately, not much has been published about the work of Sharpless.
He made a crucial and important contribution to science when he and Osterbrock and Morgan demonstrated in the Early 1950s that the Milky Way has a spiral structure; they were also the first to make a map of the spiral structure (as far as I know!)

Osterbrock and Morgan were amongst the very most important astronomers of their generation, by common assent.
But Sharpless seems to have fallen through the cracks.

Stewart Lane Sharpless, passed away Jan 19, 2013
May you rest in peace, or better still, fly up to those nebulae!

The Sharpless catalog does not include the emission nebulae in large sections of the southern Milky Way.
For this, the essential catalog of nebulae is the RCW catalog, especially for the many nebulae that were missed in the NGC+IC in the Ara to Crux strip of the Milky Way;
159745
___________________________________ _
Incidentally, it should be mentioned that galaxymap is a superb website devoted to HII regions and supernova remnants and WR nebulae;
it is the product of a brilliant person called Kevin Jardine who is a member of IIS.

P.S.
A lot of you will know the Gum Nebula, but the Gum catalog of southern bright nebulae is no longer routinely used, as RCW is more extensive. Colin Gum was a promising young Australian astronomer who met an untimely, early and tragic demise in a skiing accident

[LightningNZ]

Nice capture Geert. I must have a crack at this myself some day, it looks really interesting.

And thanks Robert. Your knowledge of these objects and their human discoverers adds so much "extra value" to this forum.

Clear skies,
Cam

[madbadgalaxyman]

More about Sharpless and Morgan and Osterbrock in my recent thread in the science forum with this title:
"Discovery of our Galaxy's spiral structure - as it happened"
It is a fascinating piece of astronomical history.

[prokyon]

Great work! Such a faint object. Would be nice to add data next year.

[madbadgalaxyman]

I continue to try to rehabilitate the reputation of Sharpless in My recent Science thread about the discovery of the spiral structure of the Milky Way:

Sharpless is something of a mystery man, having largely disappeared scientifically after his last publication in 1986 (which was decades before his death).
Furthermore, his scientific reputation is very small compared to that of Donald Osterbrock and W.W.Morgan, the other co-authors of the famous 1951-2 work that first showed the nearby spiral arms of our Galaxy. Also, Sharpless has largely disappeared from the history of astronomy, except for his catalog of nebulae and his very early work on the spiral structure of the MW.

The name of Sharpless is well known to people who love nebulae, but the extant sources on the internet seem unable to answer the question:
Who was Stewart Lane Sharpless?

[gvanhau]

Thank you all.


+1
I see we can learn a lot here.

[gvanhau]

Some times it happens that co discoverers and co workers are forgotten in time. Fortunately on this topic, we have you here to let us know.