Re: friday's quarry

I had seen that name "Lower's Nebula" on the Millennium Star Atlas when I
was looking up the names of some of the objects in my image.

I did not know the story behind it. That was a good story Steve. Thanks for
teaching me the history of it.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Gottlieb" <steve_gottlieb@No-Spam>
To: "The Astronomy Connection" <sf-bay-tac@No-Spam>
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: [TAC] friday's quarry

> On Dec 23, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Richard Crisp wrote:
>
>> here's more of the quarry:
>> www.narrowbandimaging.com/images/orion_map.jpg
>
>
> There's an interesting story with the object at the top of Richard's
> image -- Sh 2-261. This object is sometimes referred to as "Lower's
> Nebula" and is an amateur discovery from a photograph taken in 1939 by
> Harold Lower with his son Charles (amateur telescope makers from San
> Diego) using a homemade 8-inch f/1 Schmidt Camera (that's right, f/1).
> This was possibly the last well-known DSO discovery by an amateur until
> Jay McNeil's find in January of 2004. Of course, Richard and others have
> taken up this tradition again. Here's a visual observation I made of
> this object.
>
> 18" (2/3/05): Lower's nebula was not initially noticed in a rich star
> field using the 31 Nagler (63x) unfiltered. Adding an OIII filter, much
> of the field took on an irregular patchy appearance (partly due to the
> unresolved background milky way glow), but in addition a 10'x8' oval glow
> (only part of the entire complex) was locally brighter surrounding a
> group of stars south of the geometric center of the nebula. The highest
> surface brightness region (still faint) was an extended patch situated
> south of mag 8.4 HD 41997 by a few arc minutes.
>
> Steve
>
>
> --
> What TAC Is About.
> http://www.observers.org/Join.shtml
>
> Webcam, DSLR, CCD Imaging use NorCal AI.
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norcal_ai/
>
> Designing and improving TAC's website.
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/tac-ops/
>
> Sub-scribe or Unsub-scribe from TAC
> http://seds.org/mailman/listinfo/sf-bay-tac

-- 
What TAC Is About.
http://www.observers.org/Join.shtml
Webcam, DSLR, CCD Imaging use NorCal AI.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norcal_ai/
Designing and improving TAC's website.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/tac-ops/
Sub-scribe or Unsub-scribe from TAC 
http://seds.org/mailman/listinfo/sf-bay-tac