Now, I've never really thought of Cygnus as a summer constellation. Even when the constellation's Alpha star features prominently in the so-called "Summer Triangle" we all have read about ad nauseum (seriously: one more article featuring that term and I will scream).
Maybe it's because astronomical twilight is only now returning to my latitude and that always being a prime reason for me, personally, for little to no observing as of mid-May. Also, August is approaching fast, yet the Swan does not transit until well after midnight. It's that time of night, when objects are near their highest elevation, when I do the bulk of my observations. The less atmosphere to interfere with photons, the better. It's therefore that I consider the Swan to be a late summer constellation, at best. It favors the evening skies of September and remains positioned favorably well into October. True, September still counts as summer, but by then the leaves will be changing color quite soon, at least in the northern hemisphere.
Regardless, this ensures you have plenty of nights remaining in the months ahead to tackle this week's OotW. Which is a little knot of a nebula.
A little knot that is - to the best of my knowledge - uncataloged. That, however, does not mean it has not been recognized before. It has, but the only reference to it I have been able to find is a single entry in SIMBAD.
The other day I was doing some nebula work in Cygnus. There's a lot going on over there. Up to my armpits in Hubble, McDonald, Cederblad, Minkowski, Courtès, Gaze-Shajn, Simeis, Sharpless and Herbig nebulae, I reached a piece of sky that is west of the Pelican. West-southwest of that famous cloud is faint and elongated Courtès 70; you may until now have only known it as Lynds (LBN) 334. Don't worry: the veil on this catalog and the beforementioned ones will be lifted soon. Downloading imagery and scrolling through Aladin Lite, a bright little fella stood out amidst the many fainter nebulae of the region, half a degree north-northwest of the Courtès.
The position is 20:45:38 +44:15:00. This is what it looks like (all images 15', 1/4 of a degree):
DSS POSS2 Red
15red2.jpeg
DSS POSS2 Blue
15blue2.jpeg
SDSS
15SDSS.jpg
PanSTARRS
15panstarrs.jpg
2MASS
152mass.jpg
allWise
15allWISE.jpg
It's small. It's faint. It's irregular. Its center is ring-shaped. It's about 2.5' in size. In the middle, there's a mag. 14.7 star, on the north-northwestern edge is a mag. 10.5 one.
Nature of the object? I am going to go with emission nebula... but I am not sure. It does look a lot brighter in the red imagery than it does in the blue.
Designation? As said, there's only SIMBAD and that's where it goes by GAL 084.0+00.8. That page tells us there's also a radio source at that position, identified by Felix. J. Lockman: 83.941+00.781 on page 476 of this paper. Likely to be a match for 3C 423. At or near the position an IR star cluster was identified, too, but when it comes to nebulosity, I have been unable to obtain any more information. That is quite a surprise, as this is a piece of sky that has been photographed at least once or twice.
Is it in reach of moderately large amateur apertures? I cannot (yet) speak from experience, but I suspect 12 inches and a filter ought to do it under good skies.
Here's the observing guide that will help you to pinpoint it.
DSF OotW 2024-29 - GAL 084.0+00.8 Cyg_1.jpeg DSF OotW 2024-29 - GAL 084.0+00.8 Cyg_2.jpeg
Give it a go, be sure to report back, and if you have any further information on this knot: let us know..!
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Originally Posted by Steve Gottlieb
