NGC6826, Blinking planetary

Good afternoon,

After a wild storm here in the Netherlands with lots of lightning, the sky's cleared like never before. In this country it is in a lot of places very rare to have a view of the milkyway, let alone see it to an height of 30 degrees. That night was exceptional and I will never forget it. But here's an interesting observation. My primary telescope is an 8 inch newtonian on an HEQ-5 pro. I wanted to observe NGC6826, the blinking planetary in Cygnus. Watched it a few times before and then could only detect the central star and the nebolusity around it. But this time, it was getting better.

The magnification was around 400 and I didn't used any filters. The central star + shell were off course easily seen, but this time, there was more. I saw a central bar from one side to the other. The PN also wasn't round, but more oval. I then looked at www.deepskylog.be A site were people log observations of deepsky-objects. Funny thing, I only saw one positive observation of this bar, but that was with an 20 inch telescope.

That is why I'm looking for other observations from you guys with smaller aperture then that 20 inch who saw the central bar in the Blinking Planetary as well...

Thanks,
Greetings from the Netherlands,

Hi Luuk,

Sounds like a great night, I will go back and see if I have observations of this object, but it doesn't sound to familar to me. Again thanks for posting though, I will make a note of this object next time I am out and see what I can of it.

Just saw an observation from Uwe Glahn, http://www.deepsky-visuell.de/Zeichnungen/NGC6826.htm
Seems like I saw the two brighter spots on both sides merged together into a central bar. Sure is on the list for times of better seeing!

Hi Luuk,

Back in 2007, using an 8" LX200 I observed the bar using a UHC filter and 300x magnification: http://www.clearskies.eu/nl/waarneme...lagen/2007.htm (in Dutch). Although I logged an observation for this object on six occassions, I only used a high magnification for this object once, which apparantly is required to see the feature. Will try again this summer!

Cheers,


Victor

I've made a little sketch from the notes that I'd took that night.
Attachment 247

I have one high-power observation (510X with a 16" SCT). Conditions were fair (Pickering 7; NELM 5.5, SQM 20.5), but I didn't see any knots or elongation.

It was fairly early in my "career", so perhaps I should give it another go....

That would be great! Aren't there any other observation's of these spots in this Planetary Nebula?

With larger aperture (25"+), the fliers are routinely visible with decent seeing. On the night of June 22, after reading the original post in this thread, I revisited 6826 with the 18" f/4.5 and caught a few minutes of almost perfect seeing. At 946x the fliers and inner shell were obvious, and it's easy to see how the fliers could create the illusion of a bar in smaller aperture or poorer seeing conditions. Backing off the power to 215x and adding a NPB narrow-band filter, I was rewarded with a good view of the large, faint outer shell.

Thanks Jim, I will defenitely try this object again in September, when we are gathering with a couple of astro-friends in the high Alps of France. There will be an 18 inch telescope waiting there for me, it was a real eye-catcher for me, cause there weren't many positive observations from the Fliers on a Astronomy website here in the Netherlands.

This site explains what you saw. The "two bright patches in the ring on opposite sides of the central star, known as FLIERs, or Fast Low-Ionization Emission Regions. These regions are moving at supersonic speeds and are apparently relatively young in comparison to their parent nebula. According to Bruce Balick (University of Washington), "some of their observed characteristics suggest that they are like sparks flung outward from the central star late in the very recent past (a thousand years ago). Yet their shapes ... seem to suggest that they are stationary, and that material ejected from the star flows past them, scraping gas from their surfaces."

Here is the original release by the University of Washington team. Steve G. over at the NGC/IC Database hints of subtle structure in the PN at this link to the NGC/IC Database. Also, Dale Holt over at ASOD has a nice sketch from 2008 on this PN that shows the FlIERS which can viewed at this link. Hope that helps. Congrats, a wonderful observation.