Object Of The Week May 09, 2021 – NGC 5882

NGC 5882, IC 1108, Hen 2-222

Planetary Nebula

Constellation: Lupus

RA: 15 16 49.96
DEC: -45 38 58.61

Mag: 10.9

Diam: 13"

The tour of southern showpieces continues. This time I have chosen an object that is visible from the northern hemisphere as well, provided you are far enough south. This planetary nebula lies some 20º east of Omega Centauri and 1.5º south west of Epsilon Lupi in the constellation Lupus.

The planetary nebula was discovered on July 2, 1834, from the Cape Of Good Hope observatory by John Herschel. He catalogued it as object number 3594 which was observed in sweep 464 using an 18.3 inch reflector. The nebula bears both an NGC and an IC number but I have not been able to discover why.

Attachment 4318
HST image of NGC 5882

The planetary nebula is large enough to stand out as a small disk even at moderately high magnifications. The HST image shows lots of structure and I am curious what you may have observed of that.

My own notes from June 13, 2020, with my 20" telescope from my backyard in La Serena, Chile, read

"At 83x without a filter a small blue disk with a bright orange star at some 20 arcminutes away. At 320x without filters a blue round disk. Responds well to UHC and OIII. No further details seen."

so I'll need to try from a darker location. At some point I intend to bring my 20" up to the construction site of Rubin Observatory or otherwise to a dark location in the Rio Hurtado valley just south of that so I'm sure I'll be back with follow up observations.


As always,

"Give it a go and let us know!
Good luck and great viewing!"

This is what Harold Corwin has as the story

IC 1108 = NGC 5882. Both positions are good enough to positively identify
this planetary, but several people (Dreyer, Williamina Fleming, Edward
Pickering, and Luis Duncker -- whom Fleming and Pickering credit with the
discovery of the IC object) missed the identity.
The planetary was first seen by JH and recorded by him in two sweeps. He
thought enough of it to sketch it and include it among the few of his
nebulae with "figures" at the end of his CGH volume. His diameter estimates
("... = 1.35 seconds [of time, = 14.2 arcsec] by many observations", and "4
arcsec diam.") are not very consistent, but he was clearly impressed by the
planetary.
The object was next picked up on an objective prism plate at Arequipa by
Duncker, and was announced by Fleming as an emission-line star in AN 3227. In
a second paper in AN 3269, she adds a note that "A superposition of a chart
and a spectrum plate ... shows that this object is in reality a gaseous
nebula."
So, there was plenty of opportunity to identify this with JH's planetary.
However, it was apparently not until Andris Lauberts and I stumbled across
this while scanning southern Schmidt plates that the identity of the two
numbers came to light. The object is called only by its NGC number in Perek
and Kohoutek's 1967 catalogue of planetary nebulae, but Andris has it in the
ESO list, and I penciled notes in my copy of the NGC and IC.

NGC 5882 is an excellent target for smaller scope with its high surface brightness -- that is if you can reach that far south. From my latitude (San Francisco) it culminates at a elevation of only 6°, though was still prominent in a 10" scope (I believe the magnitude is closer to 10th than 11th, or even a bit brighter).

From Australia, with an 18", I also noticed a very low surface brightness outer halo, though didn't record a central star.

Hi here's my observation from 5/9/2021: Ngc 5882 planetary nebula in Lupus ; magnitude:9.50 ; size:14" ; small but fairly bright; consists of fainter outer shell and a brighter elongated inner shell; did not see the 13.4 mag. Central star. I used a 4.5 Delos eyepiece at 392x Attachment 4319

I listed two observations from Namibia under exceptional good conditions. In the second description I listed the observation of the halo, or better the brighter fragments, Steve already mentioned.

24", 960x, no filter, NELM 7m5+, Seeing II (Hakos/Namibia)
small PN; looks round at the first view but a inner 1:2 elongated, not fully closed oval shell pops out with concentrated observation; no CS visible; good [OIII] reaction

Attachment 4320
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28", 260x, [OIII], NELM 7m5+ (Gamsberg/Namibia)
PN core surrounded and attached by an direct visible 1:2 shell; brightest filamentary halo fragment 1' E of the core, steadily visible with averted vision as an 1:2 E-W glow, visible from 184x-447x, best magnification 260x + [OIII] filter; two other smaller fragments 2' SW, each visible with averted vision for seconds as laminar glows

Attachment 4321
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