Always wanted a go at this 12.6 mag planetary with a central star at 14.1 mag. A perfect torus shape and a small outer halo with a lovely Milkyway field.
Ha O3 mapped colour blended with RGB. The Ha O3 mapped gave very good star colour but the RGB blend addition made it prettier.
Wonderful image of a favorite object. I remember hunting this one down for the first time decades ago in my 10" starfinder while my friend with an 8" meters away beat me to it. He still never lets me forget it!
Even in H-B astro atlas this is anonymous, and Uranometria only gives the PK number.
cheers,
Andrew.
John that is a fine image of an object I have not seen visually since 1999! Well done indeed. This Planetary was discovered by Harlow Shapley in 1936 is noted at a distance of some 3600 lyrs and listed in the revised Hartungs as object 709.
There are 2 other Shapley objects from my memory and notes that I remember hunting down at Qld Astrofest in 1999 and perhaps you could complete that set with some more superb images.
Both these objects are in Ara.
Shapley 2 AKA IC4642 approx 11,000 lyrs about 30arc seconds and Shapley 3 noted in the revised Hartungs as object 866 at approx 5400 lyrs and about 35 arc seconds. A thread on IIS has a nice image from tornado33 of SP3 (and the Saturn nebula) http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=13472
Thanks a lot for comments and thanks for the information Peter I will take a look at the other Shapleys although they will have a job beating this one for beauty.
I was suprised how bright it appeared for a rarely listed planetary and it took me ages to process the grey background as I always end up with green sky but the PS plug in HLVG helps.
