Object of the week, August 30, 2020 - The Egg Nebula

[FaintFuzzies]

Object of the Week – Egg Nebula. PK 80-6.1, CRL 2688
Cons: Cygnus
RA: 21 02 18.7 Dec: +36 41 40
Size: 30x15” Mag: 14.0

The Egg Nebula is a bipolar protoplanetary nebula located in Cygnus at a distance of about 3000 light years
I think it is pretty cool observing bipolar protoplanetary nebulae through fairly large telescopes. When you bump up the magnification under good seeing, you start to see symmetrical structure on these objects. The Egg Nebula is no exception and is probably one of the brighter and better place objects for northern hemisphere observers.
My notes (copied from my website) with my 22” reflector at 306, 383 and 690x: Beautiful view at 690x. The NNE lobe is about twice as large as the SSW lobe. The lobes look like two triangles pointed at each other. NNE lobe is 15x8” and the SSW lobe is 8x5”.
Since protoplanetary nebula are planetaries in very early stages, its spectra is still fairly broad versus planetary nebulae. As a result, most protoplanetary nebulae, including the Egg Nebula, do not respond much at all to narrowband or O-III filters.


Egg_Nebulaa.jpg
Image from the Hubble Space Telescope


egg DSS.gif
Image from the Digital Sky Survey


As always, give it a go and let us know.

[Raul Leon]

Hi here's my observation from Chiefland Florida 11/26/2008: CRL 2688 is a protoplanetary object in Cygnus; magnitude: 12 ; size:30"x15" ; small, elongated with twin lobes and a dark center.I used a 4mm Radian at 400x with my 14.5 Starstructure Dob f/4.3 pk 80-6.1.jpg

[Steve Gottlieb]

Hey, I like the Egg Nebula -- and it's the best example, by far, of a deep sky object that responds to a polarizing filter -- but I have to point out Paul's OOTW...

Look here.

[FaintFuzzies]

Ouch! I did a search to make sure that it wasn't listed earlier. I even searched for "egg" and it didn't find it. I think we should have a master list somewhere so we know what is used or not. Even better, we can find an object of interest from the list.

[Steve Gottlieb]

You can also use Google to search on a specific site for a phrase like this...

site: deepskyforum.com Egg Nebula

[obrazell]

I keep a list of all the OOTW by year in SkyTools and have exported the lists in stx format. I guess I could try and get them out in text format. We probably also need to get the search format improved on the forum as I am guessing thsi will start happening even more often.

Owen

[Paul Alsing]

Hey, I like the Egg Nebula -- and it's the best example, by far, of a deep sky object that responds to a polarizing filter -- but I have to point out Paul's OOTW...

Look here.

This is the format I use to search, for example...

“egg” site:www.deepskyforum.com

... and it works great...