Gyulbudaghian's brightening

Here is an image showing the brightening of Gyulbudaghian's variable nebula, located at RA 20h 45' 55" and Declination +67º 57' 45" in Cepheus. There is clearly more of the cometary looking nebulosity north of the star PV Cephei. The image is a stack of 57 30-second exposures at ISO 1600 and f/3 on the 20" scope, taken on 8th March 2010. But the processing used non-linear stretches and an artificially created and edited flat field to give the most pleasing picture, so in no way is it quantitatively calibrated. It looks wonderful in such a large format and it's nice to have sort of discovered something changing up there in the stillness of space!

Obscure Nebula - looking deeper

We had compared our images of Gyulbudaghian's Variable Nebula (HH 215, GM 1-29) and neither of us could see anything definate. It was the last deep-sky night for a fortnight as the moon was setting at 11pm as a distorted deep orange almond sinking behind the horizon. So, I was inspired to take another good bunch of 30" pics. All in all, I stacked 46 (including the previous pictures - below) to get a total exposure of over 25 minutes at f/4.8 on the 20" telescope. Here is the result. This picture is improved enough for you to see the Herbig-Haro jet HH 415 and the background nebulosity is clearer. HH 415 can be found by going below and slightly left of the bright blue star right of centre to find a bright-looking 13th magnitude star. There is a very faint star just below this and the object is the small streaky blur just below that. As for the main object around PV Cephei (just below centre), I still can't really see much there. With this picture, I increased the saturation, as it had somehow dropped during processing. So now the colours of the stars are revealed and they are stunning! This is especially useful on PV Cephei, which is clearly revealed to be a dim red colour, sitting in its dark patch of nebulous dust. Who knows what magnitude it's at now!?

Gyulbudaghian's Variable Nebula

In this picture of Gyulbudaghian's nebula, North is down. It was ~ 8 mins worth of exposure on the 20" scope nearly overhead (5x1' + 6x30" + 17"). The nebula, which was discovered to be variable in 1977, has been very, very faint recently. The white lines point to the star PV Cephei, which is also faint. If you compare it to a previous image you will wonder what has happened to it... Strange star! (image courtesy STSci)