NGC 6164-5 Looks like a planetary nebula, the cast off shell of a long finished star....
Looks can be deceiving, this is an O6e Star one of the super luminious type stars that reside at the top of the main sequence line on the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram (Stars on the main sequence are classified in the order of O B A F G K M N, each is further broken into 10 subclasses of 0 to 9)
Also not a Wolf-Rayet star, those evolved stars which have left the main sequence at the end of of their life which have massive solar winds forming bubbles around them (Thors Helmet is an example)
The central star is a young O class star somewhere estimated to be 350,000 to 2,000,000 years old. Weighing in at around 40 solar masses, it is estimated to have solar winds of around 8,000,000 km per hour, these winds crash into the surrounding gasses and with the huge amounts of UV light emmitted , cause the gasses to glow, various sources suggets that the star has also blown off large amounts of material in several explosive outbursts starting some 4000 years ago which have added to the Nebula.
A very dynamic system and particularly unusual as only five such stars are known to exist, three in our galaxy and two in Small Magellanic Cloud, it is likely to end its life as a supernova within the next few million years, and according to the Hipparcos catologue (HIP81100) is only about 5350 light years away.
Shot with my usual gear
G11, 12 inch newt, qhy8 camera (offset 117 gain 50), only 8 6min exposures.... the clouds rolled in
Was going to post a bunch of shots together but i deleted ALL my images on the computer by accident .... lost all my dslr raws plus any QHY8 processed material ..... had to go to backup for fits files (whew) and for Finished TIFs of dslr shots. (accidentally dragged pictures into upper folder and it left a pictures file behind so i went to upper folder and deleted thinking it had copied....not so
) what a luddite!!!
will get back to normal soon but have to revisit some processing.
pics at 25% 50% and a quick locale shot with the frame referenced so you can see where it is.
cheers clive
(clear skies predicted here soon so will get out the Ha filter WoooHooo)