NGC2392 is a planetary nebula in Gemini constellation. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787, and is known as Eskimo or Clownface Nebula – once you take a look into the image below, I hope you will find out why 🙂 It resembles a person’s head surrounded by a parka hood. Nebula lies about 2,870 light years away and can be spotted with small telescope – its apparent magnitude is 10.1 mag. On the other hand it is pretty small object with diameter about 0.34 light year that correspond to apparent diameter of 48 arc seconds. It is comparable to Jupiter size visible in telescope.
Large version https://astrojolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2018-02-16-Eskimo.jpg
NGC2392 Eskimo nebula was created about 10,000 years ago, when a Sun like star started to cool and expand, eventually expelled its outer layers to form it. The central star will collapse and become a white dwarf. What appears a furred parka is really a disk of material containing a number of comet shaped objects.
I made image above using Meade ACF 10″ telescope and QHY163M camera on EQ6 mount. It is composite of narrowband Ha and Oiii exposures and few RGB frames. Total exposure time is about 90 minutes. Transparency was medium, seeing good, NELM about 4.5mag.
Clear skies!
Image technical data: Date: February 16-17, 2018 Location: Nieborowice, Poland Telescope: Meade ACF 10" Corrector: AP CCDT67 Camera: QHY163M, gain 0 Mount: SW EQ6 Guiding: SW 80/400 + ASI290MM Exposure: Ha 30x1, Oiii 20x1, RGB 15:10:10x1 minute Conditions: seeing good, transparency average-poor
