The Dolphin Head Nebula

You are full of gas and resemble a dolphin’s head….. Obviously you are not of this world!
That’s correct for the object seen here is more than 4500 light years away from Earth, in the constellation of Canis Major. It is basically a space bubble surrounding the Wolf-Rayet star, EZ Canis Majoris, the small blue star in the center and not to be mistaken by the larger orange one to the right, 16omi 01CMa. Fast stellar winds blowing at more than 1,700 km per second from this star, create the bubble-shaped nebula which mainly consist of ionised hydrogen. Sometime in the future, but probably not in our lifetime, the star is expected to go supernova and explode, consuming the dolphin…..

Imaging was done my rig in the remote observatory, Deep Sky Chile. A Takahashi E160 with an F-ratio of 3.3 enables me to achieve a good SNR on this rather faint object and the wide field of view is delivered by a Zwo 6200 full frame mono camera. The Paramount equatorial mount needs no guiding and the Astronomik MaxFr filters results in an image free of halos.

Telescope: Takahashi E160ed F3.3
Camera: Asi Zwo 6200mm pro
Mount: Paramount Software Bisque MX+
Observatory : Deep Sky Chile

Ha = 160x300s
Oiii = 101x300s
Total integration = 21h45m
Software = NINA, Pixinsight, Photoshop