Last year,
@Rainer Raupach
@Frank Sackenheim posted a massive
mosaic covering the coalsack loop area in Crux/Musca/Centaurus. I noted an interesting hexagonal Oiii structure within this mosaic image, and decided to investigate it further with a focused exposure time. I reached out to Rainer about this blob in his photo, but I assume he is busy with other matters since he hasn't been active in a while, and I didn't hear back! So hopefully they will have a nice surprise when they login to Astrobin next.
Shamefully I must admit I typed in my coordinates incorrectly when setting this target, and collected many hours of exposure time with quite poor framing.
Nevertheless, the hexagon-shaped target still made it into my frame! What is this thing? I have no idea!
My best guess is that some hot stars are central to the object, and it is simply some kind of ISM. But in this case of an Hii region we would expect some H-alpha emission to go along with it, but that is not here.
@Tim Schaeffer pointed out an interesting circular shock feature in the image which I have outlined here:
So perhaps this thing is supernova-related? Who knows! For now, I'll call this thing the Hexagon Nebula.
This object is very very very faint, and like with all low surface brightness targets it is hard to edit. I have not had much time to edit lately with building an observatory, and so I have not given this image a ton of attention. I figured it would be better to let it sit here in its current state than on a hard drive for the next several months. So I may be back to revisit this in the future, but for now I hope you enjoy it!
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