If, like myself, you've been an astronomy enthusiast for any lenght of time, then making any new discovery, of any kind, can be a cool experience. Well, I received an interesting email from a long time follower who was curious about a certain picutre posted in the Stars section of this web site. Investigating the image ( shown below ) I noticed a cloud of nebulosity that was not on the original survey image I had downloaded ( see below, light green arrow [original FITS, conversion name.jpe, name.jpg formats] ) from the Aladin previewer website — both images blinked below for comparision. With some further research I also obtained the POSSI/E/DSS1 survey image which is also shown below enhanced ( green circle ).

Blinked image of original and enhanced (RgB) image


Orignal image as it appears on this site. Notice the light brown stellar cloud trailing down and right of the image's central star


Original and enhanced images. The original received a light contrast increase so that the stellar cloud has just become visible.

Learning a Lesson for Dummies

To make a long story longer, I did some digging as the original image was all I had to go on. The image was obtained from ( at the time of hunting ) an unknown source and adding to the dilemma was the fact that the image file was not even properly named ( a small technical detail that I long ago learned not to do, ergo, case in point ). Five hours, three hard drives, 6 backup CD's plus backtracking through hundreds of old files via a FITS program ( fingers crossed ) finally paid off ( on the 5th CD backup); I was able to get the coordinates — btw, the name of that file was image002241.xxx! Here's the technical data on the region in the above image:

• Star HD 191978, Location RA 20 10 58.2807 Dec +41 21 09.920, Spectral Type O8
• Stellar HII GAL 077.9+04.2 72.55, Type HII region, Location RA 20 11.0 Dec +41 20

Needless to say, lesson learned! But the hunt was GREAT! And here is one last enhanced image of the same region showing the further areas of HII ionization ( light red arrows )

Credits: Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSSI, POSSII/F/DSS2) via the Aladin image previewer applet and website.

For additional information regarding HD 191978:

• The High Angular Resolution Multiplicity of Massive Stars in .pdf format, arXiv:0811.0492v1 [astro-ph] Brian D. Mason, William I. Hartkopf, Douglas R. Gies, Todd J. Henry, John W. Helsel 2008
• ATLAS OF This atlas has been deprecated; use of the Pickles atlas is recommended instead. This is an optical spectrophotometric atlas of 161 stars having spectral classes O through M and luminosity classes V, III, and I and are from the observations of Jacoby, Hunter, and Christian (1984).
• Pickles Atlas A wide spectral coverage, consisting of 131 flux calibrated stellar spectra, encompassing all normal spectral types and luminosity classes at solar abundance, and metal-weak and metal-rich F-K dwarf and G-K giant components. Each spectrum in the library is a combination of several sources overlapping in wavelength coverage —A.J. Pickles 1998, PASP 110, 863.
• LOG RECORD Fiducial T_eff and log_(g) of the JHC84 stars (solar metallicity is assumed)
• A Galactic O-Star Catalog Authors: Maiz-Apellaniz J., Walborn N.R., Galue H.A., Wei L.H. Produced according to the criteria recommended by the IAU Lortet et al. (1994)