Soap Bubble Mist
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Planetary Nebula Soap Bubble Nebula |
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| AladinLite | |
| Constellation | swan |
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Position equinox : J2000.0 |
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| Right ascension | 20h 15m 22.2s |
| declination | + 38 ° 02 ′ 58 ″ |
| Appearance | |
| Angular expansion | 4.3 ′ × 3.9 ′ |
| Central star | |
| Physical data | |
| history | |
| discovery | DM Jurasevich |
| Date of discovery | July 6, 2008 |
| Catalog names | |
| PN G75.5 + 1.7 | |
The Soap Bubble Nebula was discovered by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich on July 6, 2008 and recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as a new planetary nebula called PN G75.5 + 1.7 on July 16, 2009 .
The fine spherical structure lies in the outer areas of a hydrogen cloud in the constellation Swan not far from the crescent moon nebula NGC 6888 and is hardly recognizable even in special photographs because of its very delicate color. An independent discovery was made on July 16, 2008 by amateur astronomers K.Quattrocchi and Mel Helm; On November 13, 2008, NASA and MTU selected a composite of colors from the second explorers as the Astronomy Picture of the Day .
These discovery recordings were made with narrow-band filters in the light of the red H-alpha and SII spectral lines or the blue-green O-III line with an exposure time of 21 hours . The fact that a nebula remained hidden for so long in this well-explored part of the Milky Way is due to its extremely low contrast to the surrounding hydrogen HII region. This old remnant of a "star corpse" shows even more delicate filaments and has since stimulated the search for similar gas clouds in our galaxy.
If the Soap Bubble Nebula is at a similar distance from this cloud, it is about 4,000 light years from Earth . More detailed spectroscopic investigations must provide further information on the properties and the formation of the soap bubble mist.
Web links and literature
- Website of an almost simultaneous observer
- High-resolution images of the soap bubble nebula
- A bubble in the swan - Astronomy Picture of the Day of November 13, 2008.
- Spektrum .de: amateur recordings [1]
- J.Pöpsel, S.Binneweis: Soap bubble nebula - spherical hide-and-seek . SuW , November 2009
Individual evidence
- ^ Website of the discoverer
- ^ Rainer Kayser: Hobby astronomer discovers planetary nebula. In: astronews.com. July 24, 2009, accessed January 30, 2010 .