P Cygni Nebula

P Cygni, the bright­est star in this image, is lumin­ous blue vari­able (LBV) super­gi­ant, which had a nova out­burst in 1600 and is the pro­to­type of a well known class of stars. In 2006, a large shell of fil­a­ment­ary OIII nebu­los­ity was dis­covered. This is the remains of an his­tor­ic erup­tion thou­sands of years ago, an event that would have been sim­il­ar to the Great Erup­tion of Eta Carinae in 1843 (which is also an LBV). Some parts of the OIII nebu­los­ity also have a Ha coun­ter­part so long Ha expos­ures as well as OIII have been taken. North is up in this image.

The paper describ­ing the dis­cov­ery of the nebu­los­ity can be found here.

The plan­et­ary neb­ula in the upper left corner is Abell 69, shin­ing at 18.7mag and an appar­ent dia­met­er of about 25 arcsec.

[descrip­tion from Sakib Rasool]

Details

Tele­scope:
RCOS 14.5” f/​8
Mount:
ASA DDM85
Cam­era:
Apo­gee U16M
Fil­ters:
Astro­don Gen2
Expos­ure:
HaOIIIR­GB 920:800:220:220:220 min.
Loc­a­tion:
ROSA Remote Obser­vat­or­ies South­ern Alps
Author:
© Mar­tin Ruster­holz, Astrophotographer

Find­er Chart P Cygni Nebula

LBN 380 Region Sky Chart - Astrophotography Martin Rusterholz

Image cre­ated by Skychart

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About Me

Hello, my name is Martin Rusterholz. I’m a Swiss amateur astrophotographer living near Zurich, the biggest town in Switzerland. My interest in astronomy started when I was 16. At that time, I built my first Newtonian telescope and mount. I studied physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) which was the only study including at least some aspects of astronomy and astrophysics. “Looking at the nights sky is an experience touching everybody deeply inside, something common to all human beings independent to the language spoken by the individuals”. Deep-sky astrophotography is my passion.

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