Hi All,

Steve Gottlieb, Jerry Morris, Jim Chandler and I had a positive observation of the Calabash Nebula last Friday night with my 48"F/4 reflector.

RA
07 42 16.8

DEC
-14 42 52
calabash colour.jpg

The Calabash nebula is a protoplanetary near NGC 2438 in M46 it is bracketed between a 13.7 V MAG star and a 13.2 V MAG star and on one end of the nebula is a 16.7 V Mag star. The nebula only appeared with averted vision and the best view was with a 7MM TMB supermono at 697X unfiltered. It looked a lot like a very faint edge on galaxy and in moments of good seeing it looked to my eye to be approximately 27" long. I did not see any hint of the bright knot in the image. I tried a DGM NPB filter with no results. I hope Steve Jerry and Big Jim will share there observations here.

Calabash DSS B.jpg