Ear Nebula IPHASX J205013.7 + 465518 in Cygnus

No fancy name (such as Capellaro-Turatto-Salvadori-Sabbadin 3 or Gyulbudaghian 98-171), just a number, this is a recent PN discovery of the IPHAS survey.

The PN is mainly an OIII emitter (not bad for us) and also very strong in NII. It is hardly visible on the DSS, but that does not mean much for the visibility at the eyepiece given the high OIII portion of the integral flux.

DSS
Attachment 284

Sabin et al.
Attachment 285

Here is a fantastic image by Don Goldman, where I actually saw this PN for the first time.

Last weekend, I worked a bit in the Austrian Alps on completing my list of large PN (see here), and this PN was on the list. It is certainly not an easy PN, but there is much more to see than with some other large PN, that are more distinct on the DSS.

The PN was best visible at 100x with 5.2 mm exit pupil using an OIII filter. It appeared as a large extended and extremely faint glow. The northern edge was round, the southern edge was less well defined. The PN appeared clearly structured and in particular, the was a bar-shaped feature in the center, extending through the entire PN. This bar was NNE/SSW elongated and probably not only comprised the brighter knot in the middle, but also some faint superimposed stars further to the edges.

Thanks Reiner for the cool object. The picture looks familiar but I don't try this PN so far. But I will give it a try for sure :)