This planetary nebula is around 8 lightyears across and 1500 lightyears distant. Because of a very low surface brightness of between magnitude 16 and 25, it was only discovered in 1955. It is the remains of a sun-like star evolved into a red giant, having sloughed off mass in a number of waves, clearly visible here.
This image is the result of 1.5h of RGB data capture on an evening in Dec 2022, followed by 3h20m each of H-alpha and Oxygen-III capture, over 5 evenings in January 2023.
Hydrogen has been mapped to red and oxygen to both green and blue. The RGB and narrowband data was then combined in Photoshop.
A ZWO ASI2600MM Pro monochrome camera was used, through an 8-inch Teleskop-Service Ritchey-Chretien Cassegrain reflector, from Horsham.
Date: 22/01/2023
Location: Horsham, West Sussex, UK
Photographer: Graham Wilcock
