Image 1: NGC2392, the Eskimo Nebula, Lac Teeples 2023-11-13
The Eskimo Nebula is another planetary nebula captured in November 2023 while the antique 14" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope is mounted at the Lac Teeples Deep Sky Observatory. As with other planetary nebulae it is tiny in appearance, just 20 arcseconds in diameter. Jupiter is a big 50 arcseconds. which is why it appears like a giant disk (just kidding). With a target this small the stars will appear huge and bloated. I've managed to reduce their size and intensity but they appear irregularly shaped in this image. By the time this was captured the focus motor problems had been fixed, so I can't blame the equipment.
This may be the smallest deep sky target I have ever imaged (as seen from Earth). That we see any features is quite amazing.
The Eskimo Nebula is also known as the Clown-faced Nebula, Lion Nebula, or Caldwell 39. I think the inner bright disk is supposed to be the face of the Eskimo, Clown or Lion, and the outer ring is the furry hood that surrounds their face. If it is an Eskimo then they were probably glad to have that hood on when I observed it.
It was very frosty through the night of November 12-13 2023, I woke up in the middle of the night (4am) and took a look at the computer only to find that it had clouded over. I'd planned to look at the Eskimo Nebula earlier in the night so pointed at it, hoping that I'd find a hole in the cloud. Nothing but cloud.
Although I saw nothing I decided to leave the telescope running, pointed at the Eskimo. If the skies cleared up I'd capture something, maybe. In the end there was a short period of clear sky, and I did get a bit of data of this target, a total of 28 minutes (56 subframes of 30 seconds each). A few hours of data was thrown away (cloud and then sunrise). This tiny amount of data is another reason why the quality isn't the best! I probably kept a lot of subframes that normally would have been deleted.
In spite of all this the Nebula itself looks good! It has a double shell, easily seen here (a bright central disk plus an outer ring of light). The nebula (in the Gemini constellation) results from the explosion of a star at the end of its life. In actual size it is 1/3 of a light-year across, so thousands of times bigger than our solar system. Big - but small in the scale of our Galaxy.
NGC2392, the Eskimo Nebula, Lac Teeples 2023-11-13, imaged using the Celestron SCT-14 telescope and the ZWO ASI-6200MC camera. No filters used. 28 minutes total, 56 subframes of 30 seconds each.
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