Amateur Finds New Nebula with Small Telescope
Monday, February 23, 2004
(6:10 AM ET)
Robert Roy Britt
SPACE.com Senior Science Writer
On Jan. 23, McNeil was testing a "little scope," a 3-inch (76-mm) model he'd recently bought. He made nearly two hours worth of exposures of M78 and its surroundings. McNeil's day job intervened, and nearly a week went by before he had time to process the images and study the results. He was not expecting anything unusual.
The original image by Jay McNeil from which he discovered the new nebula that now bears his name.
Image Credit: Jay McNeil
SPACE.com
In an era of huge ground-based telescopes, clever robotic sky scanners and powerful observatories in orbit, there are few deep space objects in our galaxy that escape notice by professional astronomers. So no one was more surprised about the discovery of a new nebula than the amateur who stumbled upon it with his small backyard telescope.
"I was absolutely shocked," Jay McNeil told SPACE.com a few days after his remarkable finding was announced by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) earlier this month.
While comets and asteroids are occasionally discovered by backyard skywatchers, astronomers can't remember the last time an amateur found something this unique. By many accounts it has been several decades.
At Jay McNeil's suggestion, Adam Block at the Kitt Peak Observatory made this follow-up, more detailed image of the new nebula with a 20-inch telescope.
Image Credit: Adam Block -- Kitt Peak Observatory
And a mystery, too
McNeil's nebula, as it is being called, is an illuminated cloud of gas and dust. It is lit by what astronomers think is a newborn star, catalogued as IRAS 05436-0007. Little is known about the star.
Since the announcement, the discovery has generated a mystery.
McNeil's Nebula was not visible in seven photographs made between 1951 and 1991 for the Digital Sky Survey. But it did show up in a 1966 photo taken by Evered Kreimer, according to the web site of a space education organization called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), based at MIT. Several SEDS readers informed the organization of the Kreimer image, which SEDS members confirmed.
The nebulous object in the 1966 image had never been cataloged, however.
(More: Space.com -- Science / Hubble Space Telescope)
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Dan
Amateur Finds New Nebula with Small Telescope . . .