|
There
are a few bright planetary nebula that show extended faint shells
of material around the normal visible portion with long exposures.
This object is the combination of an extremely bright central
star, very bright planetary nebula and an exceedingly dim outer
shell making conventional processing out of the question. Bright
in 9.8th magnitude for the planetary with a 10.4 magnitude central
star. The planetaries main inner core is listed at 38 arcseconds,
which is small for my half a degree field. But that extended
envelope is many times larger. You can see the faint diffuse
diffraction spikes from the central star superimposed on the
outer shell of the planetary.
This image is
heavily stretched and reveals many very faint background galaxies.
The brightest are two 16th magnitude objects to the right of
the nebula, which you can see in the larger images. Also note
the bright patches on the "rim" of the outer shell.
Processing.
Two versions
of this image were made, one showing the conventional representation
of the inner core and normal stars. A second highly gamma stretched
image was then made, which of course bloats out all the stars
as well. But this image also revealed hordes of background galaxies.
The two images were combined with layer masking to show the best
of both images.
| 
