This started off as a bit of a scout around for a nice planetary nebula to image, I clicked on the first PN symbol in Vela showing on my planetarium software and did a quick bin 2X2 and sheesh...wow!! talk about hitting the jackpot first go
A rather faint bugger at 15mag and just a little over twice the size of Jupiter on the sky this beautiful little planetary nebula designated Wray 17-31 was only discovered in the late 60's and is rarely imaged, in fact I could only find two other images of it - a colour one taken with the AAT and the other a B&W shot with the 1.2m UK Schmidt... neither of which show as much detail
.
The nebula is estimated to be about 16,000 years old and an 18th mag and very blue H rich white dwarf star sits at its centre
It is an Ha OIII+RGB (mainly for the stars) combo and it required some good seeing to do it justice...aaaand low and behold I got two good 1/2 nights of rather steady atmosphere 8/9 Feb Yaaay!
...about time
and made for one of the highest res images I've managed to date with the AG12-SX combo - autoguide errors were smooth and even, averaging under 0.3" across the two nights
Planetary Globe in Vela (100% crop)
A real close up of the planets atmosphere
Comparison with AAT plate
The rest of the album including the full frame is
HERE