I first noticed this object when I did a widefield Milky Way Ha image using a FLI Proline 16803 and a Nikkor 50mm F1.8G lens and 5nm Ha filter, its the heart shaped wispy nebula sticking out from the left lower side of the Milky Way here:
http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/158657074/large MW Ha Nikon 50mm F4
So I did a new show of it recently as the Nikkor image cut off the Gum nebula next to Rho Ophiuchi so I wanted to reframe it correctly:
http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/165846972/large Pentax 75mm F4.5
And a closer up view with a longer lens here:
http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/165901138/large Pentax 165mm F4
Seeing Andy's excellent mosaic I thought it would be an ideal target for the Honders which excels at widefield imaging.
I took Ha and colour last night. It took quite a while to frame this as there are really no reference points. For those interested the best reference point is NGC6388 which is a bit off to the side of this image.
This image is at RA 17.26.50 Dec -48.26.10 One of the central stars is HIP80579 so you can search in Sky X on that star and it will pretty much centre this scene. That took quite a while to work out!
I also took some test shots in O111 and S11. There was no O111 at all in this scene but there was plenty of S11. Not sure how that helps as an Ha S11 combo would look a bit yuck.
This is 13 x 10minutes x 2x2 5nm Ha. I'll add colour later as I need to reshoot some that did not work out, high cloud or something interrupted.
Its fun to work on what is really a new area for astronomy. This area simply has not been imaged virtually at all. That paper from Wollongong Uni seemed the only real reference to it apart from its original inclusion in the RCW catalogue.
The image is here:
http://www.pbase.com/image/165907060/large
Greg.