After the usual media hype for the Sydney Astronomer and the presumed "discovery" of the dubbed "The Red Square". I found little extra about this object other than what was reported in the SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) during the week.
It is described by the ABC Site as;
"The discovery by a Sydney scientist of a bright red, square of gas and dust surrounding a large star has got astronomers excited. The formation, dubbed Red Square, is being described as a long-hidden jewel in the heavens."
And you can download this interview as an MP3 thrugh the RSS feed;
feed://www.abc.net.au/news/subscribe/amrssi.xml
The original paper they refer to was published in "Science" by P.G. Tutill and J.P. Lloyd on the 13th April 2007 (Science, 5855, 247 (2007)), under the title "A Symmetric Bipolar Nebula around MWC 922". [The abstract can be found at; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...t/316/5822/247 ]
Now for the bad news…. This object is certainly not new.
The object known as MWC 922, and is actually example of the so-called symmetrical bipolar planetary nebula viewed edge-wise - having similar features to the ansae in planetaries discussed in a recent thread. The "MWC" is from the catalogue of such objects, as listed by P.W. (Paul) Merrill and C.C. Burwell whose central stellar blue or red objects featuring from the series of papers presented by them in 1933, 1943 and 1949. MWC appear in the 1949 paper.
So much for new discoveries. All they did was get a picture of the nebulosity and give it a name!
This Be emission-line star, which is bright in the infra-red, has been quite extensively observed and studied over the last several decades, beginning around 1974. The central star is blue, whose spectral class is B3 to B6, however it is not young - but an old star that is turning into a white dwarf. The nebulosity with the star has been described as a “peculiar object” for ages, whose significant breakthrough was around 1999.
MWC 922 lies in the constellation of Serpens (Sepens Cauda), just 12 arcmin from the Scutum border. MWC 922 is positioned at RA: 18h 21m 01s Dec.: -13d 20’ 42”. At this place is a quite uninspiring faint star TYC 5689-00124-1 of 12.5 magnitude, with the nebulosity itself unfortunately is invisible to amateur telescopes
Some have presumed this star is part of the Serpens OB1 Association, making the distance as around 1.7kpc (1700 parsecs) or c. 5000 light-years - but there is no evidence to prove this conclusively.
While no doubt the science on image creation makes this a true wonder to be behold, I just wish they gave us just a little more of its history and be more factual details!
Note 1: If you don't believe me, just Goggle the text MWC 922, and you'll see what I mean.
Note 2: Paul Merrill wrote many interesting papers. One of my favourites is the wonderful popular astronomical paper entitled "A Voyage in Space: the Biography of a Starbeam.", which some might enjoy reading even for newbees. Very inspiring and simply written - describing the voyage of light from astronomical objects.
See : http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/c...pJ...103..275M
The Red Square Nebula... and it Ain't in Russia!
