Hi all

its been a while since I've been here-new job and bad weather and other circumstances..anyway in the interim I have acquired a QHY8 cooled CCD camera a few weeks ago, and here is one of the early results

NGC 3199 is a fascinating object in itself-a moving (?) Wolf Rayet star 18 which is producing a distorted bubble or ring in the interstellar medium, sculpting fantastic shapes, the brightest part of which I like to think of as the smile nebula

In this 2.38 x 1.58 degree field we can also see NGC 3247 in the top of the frame -which google says is an open cluster- Hartung's actually says John Herschel made an error in describing this object as a "decidedly nebulous group".

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...-isddXWM&hl=en

well it certainly looks nebulous to me.

There is also a another small but relatively bright nebulous patch in the bottom right near NGC 3199 which I am unable to identify, and of course the whole region appears suffused with nebulosity.

Its all quite fascinating and relatively less imaged region of the sky

boring details:
90 minutes of exposure-15 minute sub frames (actually shot two hours but found a trial 30 min sub was too ambitious for my system and had to toss it)
Camera: QHY 8
Filter: Baader 7 nm H Alpha
Scope: ED80
Mount: CG5 Autoguided (Orion DSCI/PHD Guiding)
Location: Suburban Sydney-far from dark site!
more noise then I like but I stretched the image to reveal more of the extensive nebulosity

larger image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9178472...02806/sizes/o/

thanks for looking, comments and critique welcome

Attached Images

3199copy-small-v2.jpg (90.5 KB, 33 views)

Fascinating. The bubble shaped nebula for NGC 3199 looks a lot like the shapes of NGC 1934, 5 and 6 which I posted recently and which may be associated with a Wolf Rayet star. It would be interesting to photograph a series of these as a project. 15 min subs! Nice guiding. Thanks for sharing.

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Kind regards
Matt
LXD75 SN 8" f/4, DSI II pro

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, "hmm.... that's funny...."
Issac Asimov

Nice wide image, and also good to see a sample of the QHY8. Please post some color shots (LRGB) using the QHY8 in the future.

Robert

Very nice nebula and very diferent with its neighbors as you mentioned. Great info and very nice set-up. Very welldone!.

Very nice shot. I like the Ansel Adams look of b/w narrowband images like this.

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Observatorio de la Ballona