NGC 6826 - The Blinking Planetary Nebula (MountainAir)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: Blinking Planetary · NGC 6826 · PK083+12.1

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NGC 6826 - The Blinking Planetary Nebula

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NGC 6826 - The Blinking Planetary Nebula

One of the reasons for putting my EdgeHD 14 in the observatory was so I could tackle many of the tiny, but fascinating, planetary nebula that permeate our galaxy. NGC 6826 is one such target.

Lying about 2,200 light years from Earth, NGC 6826 is relatively close and fairly bright. As the central star progressively fused heavier and heavier elements, it began the process of dying. The outer material from the stellar core was thrown off and the intense UV light from the star caused it to glow. What remains today is a highly-dense stellar core fragment running about 120,000°C.

My initial rendition focuses on the outer shock boundary, but the bright part in the center is actually complex and fascinating in its own right: It looks a little oblong, in part because of two FLIERs -- Fast Low-Ionization Emission Regions on the sides that are moving away at supersonic speeds. The Hubble has a fantastically-detailed photo of this central core (I may try to bring out more detail with a future HDR version from my own data).

NGC 6826 doesn't actually blink, though. This is a phenomenon based on human physiology: The central star is quite bright, so when viewing it (particularly through a small telescope) your irises constrict enough that the outer nebula appears to disappear. If you avert your eyes from the central star, your eyes dilate wider and the nebula seems to re-appear. This is why it is said to "blink." The phenomenon can be seen with other planetary nebulas in small telescopes as well.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8091792
PixInsight job	WL03PTGG4ZDLCUIQFS6E5VKDZEH6ID8K
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	19h44m47s.962
RA (top/left)	19h43m40s.485
RA (top/right)	19h43m47s.785
RA (bottom/right)	19h45m54s.612
RA (bottom/left)	19h45m48s.739

Dec (center)	+50°31′40″.30
Dec (top/left)	+50°46′52″.60
Dec (top/right)	+50°15′45″.73
Dec (bottom/right)	+50°16′27″.41
Dec (bottom/left)	+50°47′32″.60

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NGC 6826 - The Blinking Planetary Nebula

NGC 6826 - The Blinking Planetary Nebula

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NGC 6826 - The Blinking Planetary Nebula

NGC 6826 - The Blinking Planetary Nebula

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