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.
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!"
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