NGC 6369 in Ophiuchus is known affectionately as the Little Ghost Nebula (dunno why...? probably its appearance visually through a scope?)
It is tiny, the central spare tire is just 36 arc sec in diameter and the rarely imaged outer extremities, revealed in this deep exposure, span a whopping 1.2 arc min!
Sheesh, it was bluudy well cold in Canberra over the two nights it took to collect the data, I can tell'ya! reaching down to -8C both nights
The seeing wasn't the good type I often get at Wallaroo though, buuuut hey it wasn't tooooo bad either but I had to do a little more decon, unsharp mask, smart sharpening and high pass filtering than usual to get as much detail as I managed...and hopefully no artifacts are visible
.
A search of images on the web of this baby turned up no other image with really any greater details/features visible, other than that taken by Hubble of course and none that showed this extent of outer extremities and extensions, so I was happy enough with the two nights work ...complete with a visit from some rural neighbours for a star party and some visual observing...beer of course and this time hot mulled wine and sticky date pudding too
, perfect in sub zero conditions
This is a narrow band image in the end and I only gathered enough RGB (in poor seeing conditions mind you, so couldn't use it for anything else
) to colour the NB stars...but it might be worth doing a deeper LRGB version next new moon, to reveal the star clouds in the area a little better and then blend the two images together...I'll think about it
About a light year across and over 2000 light years away, you can read about NGC 6369
HERE
Close Up (100% res crop)
Full 38' X 30' Frame (to show how tiny she is)
Comparison with Hubble (to help identify what details are what)
Hope you like, something different again
Mike