by Glenn Talbert
| Telescope used | C9.25 |
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| Magnification used | 138x Having cloudy skies here for nearly 40 consecutive days, I did a bonehead mistake, I unknownly used the Orion 17mm Lanthanum eyepiece (138x) thoughout this session, I intended to use the Nagler 12mm (195x). Not complaining, just wanted to use more magnification. Both eyepieces do look similar in the dark. |
| Transparency | 9/10 |
| Filter used | OIII |
| Abell 12 (PK198-6.1) | Planetary nebula in Orion. Located nearly behind the bright (mag 4.1) star Mu Orion (Mu Orion is the closest naked eye star NNE of Betelgeuse). This bright star did infact hamper with observing this PN (Abell 12 is a mag 12.5). Some very faint nebulosity could be seen surrounding this star. It resembled having a fine mist on the optics. I was expecting to see some nebulosity dominating either one side of the star, however that was not noticed. I was not able to see any disk structure, moving Mu Orion out of the field did not help. |
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Here is an image of Abell 12 (scroll half way down) http://www.astrosurf.com/aaaov/Vie_des_adherents/CCD/ccd_obs.html
It's been said that Abell 12 can be seen in an 8" scope., ......And then there's the "Light cup". We shall wait and see.....
Abell 12 is not a showpiece object, but bagging my first Abell planetary object is quite a prize in itself.