Object of the week June 10 2012 ESO 514-12

ESO 514-12

Planetary Nebula

Lybra

J2000
RA 1522 14
DEC -23 37 33

MAG 11.5(P)

This little blue green dot is aways pleasing to me I keep come back to it year after year. I know of very observations of this little planetary, it's blue green color really jumps out at you in the eyepiece!
Attachment 236

Also 15.7' to the west is the 12.8 mag face on spiral IC 4538 which is really nice on its on!
Attachment 237

The next time you are under clear dark skies try these two and

"GIVE IT A GO AND LET US KNOW"

GOOD LUCK AND GREAT VIEWING!

I can't remember why -- probably because it's listed in Burnham's -- but this was one of the first planetaries outside the NGC/IC that I found in the late '70's. This was with a C-8 on my front lawn in the San Francisco bay area with a naked-eye limit around 4. Took about 200x to clearly see the small disc, but I was impressed. Any sign of the CS at high power, Jimi?

By the way, this planetary was discovered by Paul Merrill in 1942, so also goes by the designation Me 2-1.

Hi all,

I am looking through my observing notes and I found an observation I did of this objects in August 2005 with my 6" telescope. It's translated from Dutch:

At 105x I see for stars with two more in between them. The western one is brighter than the eastern one. When I use an OIII filter, the eastern one is the more brighter. So that must be the planetary nebula. Unfortunately the seeing isn't very good so I cannot increase the magnification to see a disk.


Clear skies,

Wouter