Man 4 clear nights out of 5 here in Canberra makes an astonomer very happy
so with favourable seeing prevailing on three of the 4 nights with one night truly excellent, I think my decision to shoot this tiny little critter with my rig paid off
This very deep image shows the rarely seen and full extent of the intricate shells and faint outer ionised gas envelope of NGC 3132 and at only about 1.5' X 1' in size it was a real test for my scope and the local seeing conditions! The intricacies revealed here in the outer envelope I could only find in one other image, taken by the CTIO guys with the PROMPT2 16" F11 RC at Cerro Tololo and I was able to confirm the capture of all structures...so I am quite happy with making myself sleep deprived over 5 days and still going to work
....
NGC 3132 The Eighburst Nebula (crop displayed at 200%)
Alternative colour palette to better show the extent of the OIII (blue) spread throughout the nebula:
NGC 3132 Eightburst Nebula
To show just how small it is on the sky here is the
full 38' X 32' un-trimmed un-cropped frame.
Hope you like
I last imaged
this little bugger waaaay back in 2004 with my LX20012" SCT, I think there is a bit of improvement?.....
Mike
ps couldn't really see any signifcant pareidolia in this one...