Saturday, 31 October 2009

Hind's Variable Nebula

Here is one of the other less studied variable nebulae -
Hind's Variable Nebula. There are a lot of very, very faintly glowing clouds surrounding the whole lower half of the picture, but the clouds certainly aren't picked up in this image. So don't go scrutinising it too deeply - instead you can see the void in stars blocked out by dust. The star at the centre is T Tauri, the prototype of its own star class. To me it looks like the starlight is reflecting off a hidden, dark wall of dust to the right (of course there is no 'right' in space!). I thought I would slowly slew the big 20" scope to this nebula near the Hyades and get a few minutes worth of exposure in order to follow on from Gyulbudaghian's nebula (see earlier posts). Unfortunately it was quite low in the direction of a small town, which means it is impossible to cut through the light pollution and get a deep image. Still, I got my first look of it in the eyepiece.

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