Sh2 132 The Lion NebulaThe Lion Nebula is a deep-sky nebula located in the southern portion of the Constellation Cepheus, bordering the Constellation Lacerta.
It is a rich hydrogen region with star clusters, emission nebulae, dark dust regions, Wolf-Rayet Stars, dust, bocks and Planetary Nebulae close to it.
While the Lion Nebula is quite large (40 arc mins in size), it is too dim to observe visually through the eyepiece of a telescope.
Sharpless 132 is primarily an emission nebula and is estimated to be roughly 10,000-14,000 light-years away in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Lion Nebula in Cepheus is believed to be a region of new star formation.
Several deep objects are inside or around this Nebula.
Wolf-Rayet StarsThis deep-sky object includes two Wolf-Rayet stars with the codes HD 211564 and HD 211853 (WR 153).
It is not part of the Cepheus constellation outline but is within the borders of the constellation.
WR 153 effective temperature is 16,336 Kelvin which is hotter than the Sun's effective temperature, which is 5,777 Kelvin. Based on a parallax of 2.25, WR 153 distance from Earth can be calculated at being 1,449.61 light years away.
These stars are extremely luminous, large and are at least 20 times more massive than our Sun. They live fast and die hard in a matter of millions not billions of years like our Sun. They exhaust their hydrogen supplies, turning to other gasses and expand outwards with massive solar winds, moving a step closer in the stellar evolution towards their death in a super or hypernova explosion.
Wolf-Rayat 153 is a variable star too. Variable stars are stars that change in brightness over periods of a fraction of a second to years, depending on the type of variable star.
"...We have detected the radio continuum and infrared counterparts of the inner and outer ionized shells related to WR 152, as well as an Hi bubble surrounding the outer ionized shell, allowing us to estimate the parameters of the ionized and neutral atomic gas.
As regards WR153ab, we have identified dust and molecular gas related to the ring nebula. The emission in the MSX band A suggests the presence of a PDR at the interface between the ionized and molecular material.
The stellar wind mechanical energy supplied by the stellar winds of WR 152 and WR 153ab is enough to drive the expansion of the ionized and neutral structures."
https://www.astroscu.unam.mx/rmaa/RMxAC..33/PDF/RMxAC..33_ccappa.pdfDark Nebulae LDN 1154 LDN 1150These deep-sky objects are known as ‘Lynds Catalog of Dark Nebulae‘, or simple, LDN objects.
A dark nebula is an interstellar cloud of cosmic dust that's so dense it absorbs, scatters and blocks visible light, making it appear inky black when viewed against the starry cosmos.
Many dark nebulae are known as Barnard objects and are catalogued using the 'Barnard' designation followed by a number-
These are named after Edward Emerson Barnard, an American astronomer who published a record of dark nebulae known as the Barnard Catalogue in 1919, and an extended list posthumously in 1927.
Dark nebulae are irregular in shape, may seem like foreboding, lifeless cosmic objects, in actual fact many of them are active regions where hydrogen molecules form and stars are born. These stars are often hidden from optical light due to the density of the dark nebula in which they're born, but radio and infrared telescopes allow astronomers to peer through the cosmic dust and get a closer look at the star formation occurring within.
A dark nebula may be the dense core of a Giant Molecular Cloud a million times more massive than the Sun, or they could take the form of compact molecular clouds known as Bok Globules, just 2,000 times the mass of the Sun.
PN G101.5-00.6 Planetary NebulaPN G101.5-00.6 is an oxygen-rich young planetary nebula included in the IPHAS catalog of new extended planetary nebulae. It has a bipolar shape with a second fainter arch extending South of the main lobe.
http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=%405135195&Name=PN%20G101.5-00.6&submit=submitBerkeley 94 Open Cluster This young clusters located at large Galactocentric distances in the direction of the Perseus spiral arm. The obtained distances and colour excesses amount to 3.9 ± 0.11 kpc, E(B − V) = 0.62 ± 0.05 for Berkeley 94, Age 7.5 ± 0.07 Myr.
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/435/1/429/1113437Teutsch 127 Open Galactic clusterStar clusters in the Sh2-132 complex: clues about the connection between embedded and open clusters
T. A. Saurin, E. Bica, C. Bonatto https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/407/1/133/984354Part of the chart in the article describe new open clusters:
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Teutsch 127a Optical embedded open cluster, includes Trap 900
SBB 1 Infrared embedded cluster with IRAS 22172+5549
SBB 2 Optical embedded cluster with bow-shock
Berkeley 94a Optical open cluster on the outskirts of the complex
SBB 3 Compact optical open cluster surrounding WR 152
SBB 4 Optical open cluster on the outskirts of the complex
NGC 7226 Open ClusterNGC 7226 is an Open Cluster in the Cepheus constellation. NGC 7226 is situated north of the celestial equator and, as such, it is more easily visible from the northern hemisphere. Given its visual magnitude of 9.6, NGC 7226 is visible with the help of a binocular with a 80mm aperture or a small telescope.
https://webda.physics.muni.cz/cgi-bin/ocl_page.cgi?dirname=ngc7226----------------------------------------------------------------------
Seeing the beautiful images of this nebula on several occasions, Maurizio and I were fascinated and it was on our wish list. Maurizio started doing the sessions of this nebula in August 2022 and the last one was in October 2023. There were around 8 sessions in the span of a year. All but one were carried out in secluded mountain sites in four diverse regions around Italy: Parco Antola - Liguria at 1400 masl, Bognanco/Pizzanco - Piemonte 1140 masl, Monte San Simeone - Udine 1149 masl, Oliveto Citra - Salerno 373 masl.
The first four sessions were the best since the one held in Oliveto had the problem of a crescent moon at more than 40%.
The stacks were made in DSS and Siril and unlike other occasions I did not do the usual extraction of Ha and [OIII] for this type of nebulae. I'll do it later by doing a new process and putting the result in a new Review. Maurizio did not do a session with an L-Pro filter for the star base but I got it with the selection of the best frames from the first sessions. As a curious thing, StarXterminator did not work, leaving a pattern of squares throughout the image (this is the second time this has happened to me) since, for example, when I made the PanSTARRS comet in the Eagle Constellation, which is even more dense in stars than this one, it worked very well. . With StarNet2 I had no problems.
The Hubble palette type coloration was obtained by moving a color parameter in HSL. The blue of [OIII] and Hb is natural from the bandpass of the Triad Ultra filter. Contrast was applied with arcsen curves and S curves. NoiseXterminator, denoise, unsharp mask and smart sharpen were used on separate layers and making a mask.
One of the difficulties I encountered was achieving a 'natural' balance between the stars and the nebula due to the density of stars in the area. On the one hand, the reduction is 'natural' when the subtract is made, but a subsequent adjustment must be made to their brightness.
This nebula turned out to be much more fascinating than I had imagined, not only because it presented the columns of dust and gas but also bocks, variable stars, open cluster, dark nebula and even a planetary nebula close to it. Really delighted and amazed by the amount of objects that are around this region. In Revision B there is some objects annotated.
We are quite satisfied with the final result but we hope to do future sessions with new instruments and see the difference in results.
Thank you all for visiting and we wish you Clear Skies
Processed July 2024.
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