K1-4 in Ophiuchus - my first PN halo confirmation

[strongmanmike]

K1-4 in Ophiuchus is a small planetary nebula with a central bright inner oval whose major axis is just 45" across.
The outer features around this planetary nebula were discovered in heavily stretched B&W SuperCOSMOS Ha data in January 2015 by the Galactic Planetary Nebula Halo Survey (GPNHS) team
As part of this team, my goal for this data collection was to look for and confirm this very faint outer halo or system of outer extensions beyond the bright inner oval.
The outer filaments revealed here extend the size of the nebula to about 2.5 arc min.

This is the first full colour image of this Nebula to verify these faint features and is my first confirmed result as part of the GPNHS team :)

Capture details are below the images:

Planetary Nebula K1-4 (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/163599119/original) (100% crop)

K1-4 in the golden Ophiuchus star clouds (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/163613736/original) (Full Frame)

Mike

[RickS]

Nice one, Mike! It's very cool to image something never seen before.

[gregbradley]

A purpose besides pretty pictures. Nice.

Good work and it must be nice to have more purpose to an image.

Greg.

[Atmos]

Very nice Mike! The sort of thing I'd love to do but need something bigger than my 5.1" straw :P

[Placidus]

Thrilling. Makes for wobbly knees.

[topheart]

Good work!
Interesting object - very small though!
Cheers,
Tim

[h0ughy]

great results Mike - having a goal and getting a result to achieve it - priceless

[strongmanmike]

Thanks for the comments guys :thumbsup: nice to have something new and meaningful to do between sessions on the usual glossy images of more traditional targets :)

Imaging something that hasn't been imaged before is a bit of a buzz....but it does generally take two or three nights for each potential target and they are generally very small, so I mix it up a bit. I plan to shoot for halo candidates 3 or 4 times a year... I still need my fix of galaxies and nebulae :D

Mike

[atalas]

Hey thats quite a lovely little PN Steve....oops,I mean Mike!had some time to kill eh?

[strongmanmike]

Ha ha, nah, no time to kill as such, like Steve Crouch, just decided to occasionally assist a team looking for otherwise undiscovered faint halos and extensions around Planetary nebulae :) After some 34 years of astrophotography and imaging :eyepop:doing something different is good and my scope and camera lend themselves well to going deep relatively quickly on faint more extended sources :thumbsup:

Mike

[atalas]

:astron:

Professor Mike :thumbsup: that sounds very exciting!look forward to more discoveries from you.

[Rod771]

Very, very exiting and cool Mike! But pretty piccies come first alright! ;)

[strongmanmike]

Ha, ha yeah we all like a pretty picture but something new is always a bit exciting too :thumbsup:

Mike

[Shiraz]

masterful imagery Mike - fascinating object, looks like many PNs have remnants of past events. A great example of how effective a good quality amateur system can be.

[strongmanmike]

Hey cheers Ray, something different :)

Absolutely, there are so many PN's too, t'would take a lifetime to shoot just a tiny fraction of them deep.

Mike