Eskimo Nebula (NGC 2392)

 

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About this Image

This stellar relic, first spied by William Herschel in 1787, is nicknamed the "Eskimo" Nebula (NGC 2392). When viewed through ground-based telescopes, it resembles a face surrounded by a fur parka. The "parka" in fact is a disk of material embellished with a ring of comet-shaped objects, with their tails streaming away from the central, dying star.

Scientists assume a ring of dense material around the star's equator that has been ejected during its red giant phase, created the nebula's shape, forming 2 giant bubbles. Each bubble is about 1 light-year long and about half a light-year wide.
The Eskimo Nebula formed approx 10,000 years ago and lies about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Gemini. North is up.

The top image is showing a specially deconvolved short set of exposures of the center part.
The lower image is showing the full frame of the CCD camera as a longer exposure set.

Find the famous Hubble image of this nebula here: 1.
Find a 3 sec image from the SUBARU telescope here: 2.

 


Technical Details
Optics

16" cassegrain in secondary focus at f/10

Mount MK-100 GEM
Camera SBIG STL-11000M at -20C, internal filter wheel
Filters Astronomik LRGB
Date Feb 19-25, 2008.
Location Wildon/Austria
Sky Conditions mag 5 sky, 1.3-1.5" raw FWHM for center frames
Exposure center exposures: L: 30x60 sec, R:G:B = 960:600:960 sec (12o sec sub-exposures)
full frame: L:R:G:B = 60:120:80:120 min (20 min sub-exposures)
Processing Image aquisition in Maxim DL 4.6; Preprocessing and deconvolution in CCDStack;
wavelet filtering for center frames; further processing in Photoshop CS3;