Sh2-132 was one of the
first objects I ever captured, which can be seen
here, so I found it fitting to have another go at it and to go a bit deeper this time than what my patience back then allowed me to.
This massive
emission nebula is located in the southern edge of the constellation
Cepheus. It lies at a distance of about 10400ly from us which places it in the Perseus Arm, the largest known arm within the Milky Way. Emission nebulae are nebulas formed by ionized gases that emit light, the stars responsible for this ionization are massive and hot. There are two particularly interesting ones here, namely the two
Wolf-Rayet stars WR152 & WR153 as well as a a class O star and several class B stars. In the past it is believed that chain star formation processes took blase in the nebula, these have since halted as there are no signs of recent activity. It also includes several LDN catalogue nebulae.
WR152:WR152 has an effective temperature of 15.507 Kelvin, about 2.68 times hotter than our sun. 
Identifiers: HD 211564, TYC 3986-2068-1, WR 152WR153:WR153 is a variable star which means its size/brightness changes over time. Over a period of 0.086 days it varies within mag 9.165-9.038. Its temperature is 16.336 Kelvin which is about 2.8 times hotter than our sun.
Identifiers: GP Cephei, HD 211853, TYC 3986-1670-1, HIP 110154, BD+55 2721, GP Cep, WR 153The Red Supergiant RW Cephei:This is a K-typehypergiant and one of the largest known stars. With a radius of 1.100 times that of the sun it is nearly as large as the orbit of Jupiter.
Identifiers: Rw Cep, HD 212466, TYC 3986-365-1, HIP 110504, BD+55 2737, RW CepBerkeley 94 (Open Cluster):An open cluster located about 12.700ly away
Case 246:This deeply red star is a carbon star (C-type star) which typically are luminous red giants whose atmosphere contains more carbon than oxygen. The two elements in the upper layers of the star forms carbon monoxide tha consumes oxygen in the atmosphere. The carbon atoms forms other carbon compounds and gives the star a sooty atmosphere and thus, its deep red color.
Identifiers: C* 3118, Case 246, V* V650 Cep, CGCS 5601This object is otherwise packed with interesting features, one of the most interesting ones for me is the really faint bow shock like Oiii structure and Ha streams shown here:
I'm struggling to find much information about this, but there are clear signs of a Oiii bow shock type structure here as well as some stronger Ha streams pointing towards the hydrogen bubble in the lower right corner. This might require some adjustments to the FOV in order to properly research more though:
Interestingly there are several bubble structures being formed by the strong stellar winds here as well. They appear to be somewhat connected and the inner ones are very well defined.
The structures around WR153 are so strong in both Oiii and Ha that they cancel eachother out, resulting in the white colors you see. There is a particularly strong and interesting outflow of ionized gas from above LDN 1162 towards the "SNR like" bubble on the left. Where it meets this bubble it seem to partly form a fainter bubble.
The light that these gases emit almost form a sort of similar shape as the strong stream in the centre of the object, only a lot fainter and larger:
The bubble(s) around WR152 are particularly strong in Oiii and seems to have outer layers in both Oiii and Ha. The main bubble structure seem to be violently pushed outwards by the stellar winds which makes this one of the most beatuifully defined structures in the image:
Not until after I had posted and edited the description I noticed another feature that nearly eluded me. A small bubble hidden within the larger Oiii structure above. It lies sort of in between the two stars; BD+54 2726 and TYC 3986-1299-1. It takes a highly recognizable shape, but what it is needs more research as any attempts of annotating/identifying what lies within have been unsuccessfull so far. I gather that it might be too dim to actually see with this resolution. The final processed image was processed from 2x drizzled stacks. Those original files had been removed for storage purposes, so I might have to revisit this:
Oiii:
Ha:
[i] [/i]
This one is most notable in the Ha spectrum and consists of several layers of hydrogen and some oxygen. It reveals several intricate structures best viewed in inverted Ha:
Another one most notable in the Ha spectrum that takes a similar shape to other bubbles I've imaged, for example WR134 and SNR G73.9+0.9 which can be seen in the description via this link:
When viewed as a complete image it almost seems like a string of bubbles tied together:
Layer presentation:
Comments