M 1-77

[Sue French]

For the past 15 years, Ive been trying to see the planetary nebula PN G 089.3-02.2 (Minkowski 1-77, PK 89-2 1). It looks like a star through everything at any power. Well, there were a couple times it didn’t look quite stellar, but I could chalk that up to the seeing. Through my largest scopes I occasionally thought it looked slightly bluish (averted imagination?). It doesn’t respond to an OIII or an H-beta. With a UHC it looks a shade brighter with respect to the mag 11 star 1.3′ in PA 118° than it does without the filter. Whoopee.

Has anyone seen this look like anything other than a star? Maybe Jimi can try this with his big, wonkin' scope.

Clear skies, Sue

[Jimi Lowrey]

Hi Sue,
I am traveling with our RV but when I get back to West Texas I will give it a go ! This sounds like my kind of object��

[wvreeven]

Hi Sue,

I had a look tonight with my 20" from SQM 21.4 skies in southern France. At 545x it looks stellar to me and it doesn't seem to respond at all to UHC, OIII and H-Beta. According to Kent Wallace's SECGPN list this is a suspected planetary nebula, though Simbad doesn't say that. I hope Jimi can shed some light on this matter.


Clear skies,

Wouter

[Sue French]

George Jacoby suggests that it may be a very dense, dusty object so that the usual ionization lines aren't appearing (or not very strongly). He also suggests that even with a spectrum sometimes you can't tell what's going on. There are a couple papers that discuss this object and also the variability of its central star.

[Jimi Lowrey]

I took a look tonight at M 1-77, At 375X with my finder eyepiece it looked stellar but I could see a hint of color I bumped up the power to 697X and to my eye it was a pale orange color. It was very similar to the color of the frost Leo nebula. I tried a NPB filter and got no response. I then tried 814X and the color was the same. I did not see any nebula around the star just the pale orange color. I wish I had tried a H-Beta filter. I will next time. This is a very interesting object.