NGC 1514 - The Crystal Ball Nebula
Published in Astronomy Now Magazine February 2019
Featured in The Journal of The British Astronomical Association, December 2020
NGC 1514 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Taurus. William Herschel described it "A most singular phaenomenon" and forcing him to rethink his ideas on the construction of the heavens. Up until this point Herschel was convinced that all nebulae consisted of masses of stars too remote to resolve, but now here was a single star "surrounded with a faintly luminous atmosphere." He went on to conclude "Our judgement I may venture to say, will be, that the nebulosity about the star is not of a starry nature".

It has since been conjectured that the nebula in fact envelops a tightly orbiting double star with a period of up to 10 days. Gas is presumably expanding away from the larger star of the pair.
Picture





TARGET
Nomenclature:  NGC 1514, Crystall Ball Nebula
Right Ascension: 04:09:16.984
Declination: +30:46:33.47
Size: 3 arc min including outer plumes
Discovery: William Herschel on November 13, 1790

EQUIPMENT USED
Twin APM TMB LZOS 152 refractors
10Micron GM2000 HPS mount
Twin QSI6120 CCD cameras
Astrodon filters
IMAGE CAPTURE
3nm OIII: 21x1800 bin 1x1
Red: 20x300 bin 1x1
Green: 20x300 bin 1x1
Blue: 20x300 bin 1x1
Total integration: 23.8 hours
Pixel scale: 0.534 arcsec/pixel
Field radius: 0.368 degrees
Capture dates: 3-5 November 2018
Capture location:  Alcalali, Spain
IMAGE PROCESSING
Pre-processing: CCDStack2
Post-processing: Photoshop CS2