NGC 2736 – HERSCHEL RAY - PENCIL NEBULA

Vela

(ra: 09:00,35/ dec -45:59)

DATA

TYPE: Supernova Remnant

VISUAL BRIGHTNESS: n/a

SIZE: 20 x 2 arc minutes

DISTANCE: 815 light years

OBJECT DESCRIPTION

NGC 2736 is the brightest filament of the Gum Nebula, remains of a star that went supernova 11.000 years ago. It is also known as Herschel Ray or the Pencil Nebula. It was discovered by John Herschel in 1835 using an 18 1/2 inch telescope. I learned Herschel put the scope in a fix position and waited for the sky to drift. This technique improve the sensitivity of the retina. The FOV of his set up was only 15 minutes. (*)

Have not seen many images of this object over the net. The night was pretty bad with the full Moon and to make things worse lot of wind. Could not collect much data from the RGB nor the Luminance channels, so just for now the image stays in Ha.

This object is quite a challenge to see, even in rural areas. So despite the image is quite noisy I can't complain too much

IMAGE INFORMATION

SCOPE: Celestron SCT 8" @ 7 (roughly)

MOUNT: Vixen GPDX SkySensor 2000

SKY CONDITIONS: full moon

CAMERA: Starlight Xpress SXV H9

FILTERS: Astronomik Ha 6nm

EXPOSURES: Ha (105)

IMAGE ACQUISITION: AstroArt v 3. CCD control Interface v. 3.72

GUIDING: Synta 70/400 refractor - SXV Guide Camera

PROCESSED: Calibrated with Images Plus (no darks, nor bias used) RL Deconvolution, Photoshop CS

(*) Source Astronomy Magazine