Object of the Week, July 7, 2019 – Minkowski 1-92 – Minkowski’s footprint

[FaintFuzzies]

Object of the Week, July 7, 2019 – Minkowski 1-92 – Minkowski’s footprint in Cygnus
Size: 16x8”
Mag: 11.7
RA: 19 36 18.8
Dec: +29 32 50

I am following Alsing’s lateness, but not that late. ;) Apologize as I’m living out of my suitcase at my friend’s house. My family's stuff is sitting in my destination getting ready to be delivered to my new home. So I don’t have access to any of my physical books, notes, etc. I am winging this one. I’ll be 100% at my new place in a few weeks.

Minkowski’s footprint is one of my favorite protoplanetaries and pretty easily found. However, need a huge telescope and massive magnifications to see anything more than just a tiny elongated bright glow.

From my recollection, I used more than 600x to see the two lobes as separate parts, one being larger than the other. Anything lower than 500x will show an elongated object. Lower than 200x is just a high surface brightness slightly elongated object and easily missed as a star.

So give it a go and let us know!!

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DSS image


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Hubble Image

[Bertrand Laville]

Hi All,

Here are two sketches of the Footprint Nebula: one with a Meade LX10", the other with an Obsession 25".
Detailed report at http://www.deepsky-drawings.com/iras-193432926/dsdlang/fr

Clear skies
Bertrand
http://www.deepsky-drawings.com

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[Howard B]

My best observation of M1-92 is from 2001 with my old 20-inch f/5 Obsession:

"Super duper! Sharp star images up to 897x, and an excellent look at this beautiful and small planetary. Definitely see how it got its name..."

Although the star images were stayed sharp up to 897x, the nebula continued to look good up to 1042x, which is the magnification I used to make this sketch:

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In my experience it's best to save Minkowski's Footprint for nights with the steadiest seeing because it's so small, but it still looks good on lesser nights.

[Raul Leon]

Here's my observation from 10/4/2010 : Minkowski 1-92 aka "the Footprint ", planetary nebula in Cygnus, magnitude:11.3 ; fairly bright but tiny , this object looks like a bloated double star. I used only 396x on a night of mediocre seeing. Could definitely take more power on a better night. I used a a 4mm Radian at 396x with my 14.5 Starstructure Dob f/4.3 3573

[Uwe Glahn]

With 16" and 18" apertures the object always shows two different large knots.

sketch: 16", 600x, NELM 7m0+, Seeing II
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With the 27" I was chasing the perfect seeing for years and finally got it at a 9500ft High Alpine location. Challenge under perfect seeing and larger aperture were the CS, the star near the center and the different appearance of the knots itself.

sketch: 27", 1465x, NELM 7m0+, Seeing I-II
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[Howard B]

Beautiful drawing Uwe, it must have been a great thing to see in the eyepiece!

[FaintFuzzies]

Wow Uwe! Amazing sketch! If you can see that in your 27", wonder what it would look like in the 48"!

[kisspeter]

Minkowski 1-92 is visible even in a 4" (169x, 15' field). Obviously it's very small and no real details were visible. I could only see that it has some kind of shape / asymmetry. My drawing from 2001:
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Uwe, that 27" drawing is fantastic!