FaintFuzzies
February 5th, 2020, 08:35 PM
Object of the Week, February 02, 2020 - Two Abell Planetary Nebulae in Orion – one is easy and other is super tough!
Oh cool, I get this OOTW on Feb 2, 2020. It is a palindrome date and being a football guy, the Super Bowl. Since this date has a bunch of 2s and two great things on this date, I’ll talk about TWO objects but in the same constellation!
Let’s start with the easy one - Abell 12
RA: 06h 02.4m Dec: +09 39’
Size: 37” Mag: 12.0v (central star 19.1)
Many of you know that Betelgeuse is dimmer than usual, almost as “dim” as the belt stars and Bellatrix. It is about mag 1.5. Anyhow, why I’m talking about Betelgeuse? Start from Betelgeuse, hop to the northeast to first star of the club that Orion is holding. Abell 12 is literally sitting right next to the blazing 6th mag star, I mean literally, about 1’ away. Point your scope at the star, toss in an O-III filter, and crank your magnification to something upwards of 300x. Take your time and you will see the high surface brightness round planetary sitting to the northwest of the star (PA 60 degrees). Make sure that your optics are clean as any glare from the star might mask the PNe.
In my 22” I immediately picked it up at 377x as a very bright and obvious round glow with a sharply defined edge. At 528x and averted vision, the surface is slightly mottled.
3783
Image by Derek Santiago (https://www.pbase.com/dsantiago/image/162322763/large)
3784
Eyepiece rendition with my 22” at 377x and O-III filter under NELM 6.5 skies. Field: 10.4’
Now onto the really hard one – Abell 13
RA: 06h 04.8m Dec: +03 56’
Size: 174x134” Mag 15.3v (central star 18.8)
I believe that the visual magnitude is a bit misleading for this deep red planetary. I tried at least 5 or 6 times before I finally saw this object. I’ve failed under NELM 6.5 to 6.8 skies.
Then one day at a pristine night on Nov 2, 2010 at Shot Rock (elevation 7,800 feet). The skies were very good and fairly steady. NELM was 7.2. Using my 22” and 18mm BGO orthoscopic eyepiece (128x) and Orion Ultrablock filter, I finally observed an extremely faint arc aligned north-south and curving towards the east. The arc was 1.0’ long. Two nearby 15th magnitude stars; one immediately off the north tip and the second star about 0.6’ NNE of the first star. These stars were used to confirm the observation an helps confirm which part of the ring was actually seen. This observation was confirmed by another experienced observer. Then we dropped the 12.5mm BGO ortho (184x) and 10mm ZAO-II (230x). It was seen with both, but a bit tougher with the 10mm as the magnification was a bit too high by that point.
3785
Abell 13 by Dan Crowson (https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcrowson/32069729568/sizes/l)
3786
Eyepiece rendition with my 22” at 128x with Ultrablock filter under NELM 7.2 skies. Field: 20’
Now let’s “Give it a go and let us know!”
Oh cool, I get this OOTW on Feb 2, 2020. It is a palindrome date and being a football guy, the Super Bowl. Since this date has a bunch of 2s and two great things on this date, I’ll talk about TWO objects but in the same constellation!
Let’s start with the easy one - Abell 12
RA: 06h 02.4m Dec: +09 39’
Size: 37” Mag: 12.0v (central star 19.1)
Many of you know that Betelgeuse is dimmer than usual, almost as “dim” as the belt stars and Bellatrix. It is about mag 1.5. Anyhow, why I’m talking about Betelgeuse? Start from Betelgeuse, hop to the northeast to first star of the club that Orion is holding. Abell 12 is literally sitting right next to the blazing 6th mag star, I mean literally, about 1’ away. Point your scope at the star, toss in an O-III filter, and crank your magnification to something upwards of 300x. Take your time and you will see the high surface brightness round planetary sitting to the northwest of the star (PA 60 degrees). Make sure that your optics are clean as any glare from the star might mask the PNe.
In my 22” I immediately picked it up at 377x as a very bright and obvious round glow with a sharply defined edge. At 528x and averted vision, the surface is slightly mottled.
3783
Image by Derek Santiago (https://www.pbase.com/dsantiago/image/162322763/large)
3784
Eyepiece rendition with my 22” at 377x and O-III filter under NELM 6.5 skies. Field: 10.4’
Now onto the really hard one – Abell 13
RA: 06h 04.8m Dec: +03 56’
Size: 174x134” Mag 15.3v (central star 18.8)
I believe that the visual magnitude is a bit misleading for this deep red planetary. I tried at least 5 or 6 times before I finally saw this object. I’ve failed under NELM 6.5 to 6.8 skies.
Then one day at a pristine night on Nov 2, 2010 at Shot Rock (elevation 7,800 feet). The skies were very good and fairly steady. NELM was 7.2. Using my 22” and 18mm BGO orthoscopic eyepiece (128x) and Orion Ultrablock filter, I finally observed an extremely faint arc aligned north-south and curving towards the east. The arc was 1.0’ long. Two nearby 15th magnitude stars; one immediately off the north tip and the second star about 0.6’ NNE of the first star. These stars were used to confirm the observation an helps confirm which part of the ring was actually seen. This observation was confirmed by another experienced observer. Then we dropped the 12.5mm BGO ortho (184x) and 10mm ZAO-II (230x). It was seen with both, but a bit tougher with the 10mm as the magnification was a bit too high by that point.
3785
Abell 13 by Dan Crowson (https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcrowson/32069729568/sizes/l)
3786
Eyepiece rendition with my 22” at 128x with Ultrablock filter under NELM 7.2 skies. Field: 20’
Now let’s “Give it a go and let us know!”