Here is an interesting object - NGC6164-5 in Norma (NGC6164 and NGC6165 refers to each individual shell).
The object is a bipolar emission nebula. The central star (HD148937)
is extremely hot and the ultra-violet light it emits heats up the
surrounding gas. The expelled gas, guided by the magnetic field of the
star, creates the symmetric shape characteristic of a bipolar nebula.
Its distance is 4000LY away.
About the project:
This is actually quite a tough object to capture. In all, this was
taken over several nights where the transparency were average,
sometimes with thin haze present. Worse still, the mount gave problems
intermittently during tracking. This image is a resultant cumulative
work of 4 sub-exposures of 20 minutes each, hence totalling 80
minutes. The actual number of exposures were more, about 9 were
obtained (each 20 minutes long) but the best 4 were selected. The
resultant image is still quite grainy, perhaps I will try to gather
more sub exposures in time to come. You will also notice two faint
patches of wispy nebulosity on the top left and right of the bipolar
nebula, plus fainter streaks of nebulosity in the general upper
location of the image. At first I thought these were faint earth
clouds or the result of bad flats, but they are real!
Not sure if a colour image will follow by, but gonna rest up first!
