Equipment
Telescope
Planewave CDK1000
Camera
Moravian Instruments C5A-100M
Mount
Planewave 1000 Series Gimbal
Filters
Chroma Blue 2″
Chroma Green 2″
Chroma H-alpha 3nm Bandpass 50 mm
Chroma Lum 50 mm
Chroma OIII 3nm Bandpass 50 mm
Chroma Red 2″
Software
Adobe Photoshop
Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight
Objects
NGC 6302
Bug Nebula
PK349+01.1
Description
Thank you to Mike Selby for this amazing data that reveals the faint outer OIII and Ha nebulosity on this remarkable PN! I used ContinuumSubtraction to blend in the details into the RGB. Thank you to Mike for the guidance to process this data!
NGC 6302, also known as the Butterfly Nebula, is a bipolar planetary nebula located about 3,400 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. It spans an incredible 3 light-years from tip to tip, formed from the outer layers of a once Sun-like star violently expelled into space. Hidden behind the central dust lane is a white dwarf with a surface temperature exceeding 200,000°C—one of the hottest known. The star has periodically ejected gas and dust over the past couple of thousand years, creating the nebula’s structure The gas in the “wings” is traveling at over 600,000 miles per hour. The central star, among the hottest stars known, had escaped detection because of a combination of its high temperature, the dusty torus (which absorbs a large fraction of the light from the central regions, especially in the ultraviolet) and the bright background from the star.
There is dust in the region I tried not to get rid of but minimized it to highlight the nebula.
This is an incredibly beautiful region and a dramatic Planetary Nebula and was a joy to process! I did focus extensively on the fainter OIII regions that shape the wings and the outer Ha.