Hubble’s Variable Nebula

Distance 2500 light years

Cross you fingers that this season Hubble’s Variable wakes up because if she does we’re gonna get an APOD (I mean surely we will no?)

Last Season Hubble’s Variable Nebula was annoyingly quiet. Even So we managed to catch light echos passing through her nebula once a week over a period of 7 months which is a tremendous. I’d like to thank Hat Man Dew and MR CRAZY PHYSICIST for managing last season’s worldwide collaborative effort so expertly.

This GIF was made using a 5 day averaging of the submitted stacks with contributions by @HatMandew @TheCyberBrick @SpaceKadet @SPACEVISION @hnau @poptart @AstroBob @relogge @T3kko @[SF.FS]elSchabei @malden and @MrCrazyPhysicist

Variable Nebula: Astronomy’s Lost Targets

Over a hundred Years ago a young Edwin Hubble showed the world that NGC2261 (soon to become Hubble’s variable Nebula) was pulsating. Amazing but something even more amazing shoved these amazing objects out of the limelight and into a forgotten branch of astronomy that few have considered again until now. . .

(oh and the even more amazing thing was the discovery of galaxies)

This video show how the biscuit man with a large dose of help from Dr Emma Chapman, amateur John Lightfoot and Tom Polkis rediscovered these truly remarkable deep space objects.

Here is the animation of Hubble’s Variable Nebula that I managed to produce with the help of Telescope Live’s telescope in Chile. This result is bitter sweet for me because although we caught light ripples (similar to what the Hubble space telescope caught when shooting RS Puppis) we didn’t see a shadow until right at the very end of the run. That shadow was about to spread itself across light years of nebula, a fantastic display that no human will ever witness.

Hubble’s Variable Nebula – Big Amateur Telescope

Although Hubble’s variable nebula isn’t kicking off the way we would hope, we can still see the changes in the ripples of light in this animation which is the BAT’s most recent attempt.

But what we really want to see are the dark shadows passing over the nebula, and when it does, our team at the Big Amateur Telescope will be ready!

This recent GIF was made using a 5 day averaging of the submitted stacks with contributions by @HatMandew @TheCyberBrick @SpaceKadet @SPACEVISION @hnau @poptart @AstroBob @relogge @T3kko @[SF.FS]elSchabei @malden and @MrCrazyPhysicist all from The Big Amateur Telescope on the astrobiscuit discord server! The animation was then expertly processed by @MrCrazyPhysicist.

168667228.n58sTGAY.hubbles_variable_nebula_1

Tom Polakis’s bagged a dark shadow passing across Hubble’s variable nebula 5 years ago from Pheonix Arizona.

Download Regular Imager's reference frame

Center (RA, Dec):	(99.792, 8.736)
Center (RA, hms):	06^h 39^m 10.018^s
Center (Dec, dms):	+08° 44′ 09.284″
Size:	1.5 x 1.5 deg
Radius:	1.061 deg
Pixel scale:	1.08 arcsec/pixel
Orientation:	Up is 0.0138 degrees E of N

What is a reference frame?

Download Lucky Imager's reference frame

Center (RA, Dec):	(99.792, 8.736)
Center (RA, hms):	06^h 39^m 09.976^s
Center (Dec, dms):	+08° 44′ 09.402″
Size:	18 x 18 arcmin
Radius:	0.212 deg
Pixel scale:	0.54 arcsec/pixel
Orientation:	Up is 0.0191 degrees E of N

What is a reference frame?