glenc
08-10-2008, 07:54 AM
I looked at the planetary nebula NGC 1514 last night. It has a bright star in it and is best seen with a filter.
It lies between two magnitude 8 stars. Here is some background info on it.
"William Herschel started with the idea that all nebulae were composed of stars, and he therefore included clusters, even scattered ones, in his observations. When he found that some nebulae (e.g. IV 69 = NGC 1514, a magnitude 10 planetary nebula 1.9’ diameter) contained “some kind of luminous fluid” he “lost interest in the scattered clusters, and after 1790 he only catalogued nine* of them.” His small field of view (15’) also made it hard for him to see large clusters.
(*This should be 12 OC after 1790 according to Bob Erdman. NGC/IC Project, The Historically Corrected New General Catalogue.)
Here is an image: http://www.ngcic.org/dss/n/1/n1514.jpg
It lies between two magnitude 8 stars. Here is some background info on it.
"William Herschel started with the idea that all nebulae were composed of stars, and he therefore included clusters, even scattered ones, in his observations. When he found that some nebulae (e.g. IV 69 = NGC 1514, a magnitude 10 planetary nebula 1.9’ diameter) contained “some kind of luminous fluid” he “lost interest in the scattered clusters, and after 1790 he only catalogued nine* of them.” His small field of view (15’) also made it hard for him to see large clusters.
(*This should be 12 OC after 1790 according to Bob Erdman. NGC/IC Project, The Historically Corrected New General Catalogue.)
Here is an image: http://www.ngcic.org/dss/n/1/n1514.jpg