Credit: ESO

These CCD images show Sakurai's new star and the planetary nebula surrounding it. The images were obtained with the CCD Camera at the Dutch 0.9-metre telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory by Hilmar Duerbeck (European Southern Observatory). Each of the four fields measures about 1.4 x 1.4 arcmin. North is up and East is to the left. The upper-left image was taken through a narrow-band filter (spectral interval 660.9 - 668.8 nm) in which only light coming from the star (the 'spectral continuum') is recorded. The image on the upper-right was taken through a narrow-band filter centred on the hydrogen H-alpha-line (652.5 - 660.7 nm). It shows that the hydrogen in the planetary nebula around the star radiates strongly. The shape and dimension of the nebula is much better defined in the lower-right image, which was produced by subtracting the continuum image from the H-alpha image, leaving only the emission of the nebula. It has an almost circular shape - with the strongest emission in the north-west quadrant - and a diameter of about 32 arcsec. The nebula also appears to have the same shape and dimension in the fourth (lower-left) image taken through another narrow band-filter (497.9 - 503.5 nm) which isolates the green light associated with the "forbidden" emission lines of doubly ionized oxygen ([O III]).

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso9619a/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License