NGC 6563: A Small Planetary Nebula "Best Observed in a Telescope" (ChatGPT says) (Alex Woronow)

NGC 6563: A Small Planetary Nebula "Best Observed in a Telescope" (ChatGPT says)

NGC 6563: A Small Planetary Nebula "Best Observed in a Telescope" (ChatGPT says)

Capture Rig:
OTA: CDK 24
Camera: Moravian 61000
    Pixel Resolution: 3.76 (Capture at 2x binning--unfortunately)
Observatory: Heaven's Mirror
Date of Capture: Aug '24
Date of Processing: Aug '24

Exposures Used:
Broadband: 1.9 hr
Narrowband: 5.8 hr
Total Exposure time: 5.8 hours
Image Width: 0.13deg

Processing Tools:
1.    Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz, Radiant Photo, PhotoDirector, 3DLUT Creator
2.    Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator
3.    My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (w/ J. Hunt), ColorTweaker, StarTweaker

Target Description:
This planetary nebula was discovered by the famous astronomer Edward Pickering in 1882. It has a somewhat irregular shape and an imperfect structure. At this scale, it lacks any "wow" factor detail. What is apparent the inner flow is dominated by OIII emissions (blue) and a Ha (red) region lies outside of the OIII floor. This is a standard relationship. The central dying star's emissions decline radially, and OIII has a higher ionization energy than Ha.

Processing Description:
Unfortunately, this small planetary nebula was captured at 2x binning. Processing involved upscaling 2x and, in the end, penalizing the image detail by lessening the coefficient of the first wavelet. Also, there were only 4 OIII subs, which penalizes the detail in the blue channel and makes a narrowband-only image of questionable reliability. Therefore, this image is an RGBSHO image. (ChatGPT says this 12th magnitude, 48-arc-second object is "best observed with a telescope." See…ChatGPT knows what's best for you, me, … all of us!)

Target Statistics:
Distance: 4.5k ly
Apparent Magnitude: 12
Absolute Magnitude: 1.3
Average Surface Magnitude: 20.8
Apparent DSO Span: 1.06 arc minutes (faintest extremity to faintest extremity); The brightest region spans about 48 arc seconds
Pixel Span at Target: 4E9 km

Alex Woronow

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	10532392
PixInsight job	MPKJDL2J1392QQ2E6CLAWDWEDYPJJR5V
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	18h12m02s.774
RA (top/left)	18h12m28s.230
RA (top/right)	18h12m10s.489
RA (bottom/right)	18h11m37s.343
RA (bottom/left)	18h11m55s.430

Dec (center)	-33°52′03″.87
Dec (top/left)	-33°53′39″.99
Dec (top/right)	-33°46′47″.13
Dec (bottom/right)	-33°50′27″.52
Dec (bottom/left)	-33°57′20″.77

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