Gemini Image Captures Elegant Beauty of Planetary Nebula Discovered by Amateur Astronomer

Chris Wright

29th, July 2011

Gemini Observatory image of Kronberger 61 showing the ionized shell of expelled gas resembling a soccer ball. The light of the nebula is primarily due to ionized oxygen (oxygen-III) emission and its central star can be seen as the slightly bluer star very close to the center of the nebula. The field of view is 2.2 x 3.4 arcminutes with north up (rotated 22 degrees west of north). Image processing by Travis Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage. A color composite image, it consists of two narrow-band images (O-III and Hydrogen-alpha with three, 500-second integrations each) obtained with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai‘i. Below the bright star at left is a barred spiral galaxy in the distant background, careful inspection will reveal several additional distant galaxies in the image.

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