Patrick, Abell 31 is the largest known planetary nebula in the sky. I think the trick will be to find the parallagram of 4 stars in the field. There is a picture and a nice observing report at this website. Maybe your skies there are not dark enough. I picked up Abell 35 at Bryce Canyon a few years back and that was faint. I also viewed Jones-Emberson1 at Fort Pearce a couple of years ago. It was out of the light pollution from St George. Low surface brightness planetaries need dark skies and averted vision and lots of patience. http://www.skyhound.com/sh/archive/feb/PNG_219.1+31.2.html Debbie On Thu Feb 19 9:24 , erikhansen@TheBlueZone.net sent:
It's listed at mag 12.2 spread over large area (16').
Hi Debbie,
We had surprisingly good weather last night so I tried to get a picture of Abell 31.
Despite binning 3x3 and shooting a 10 minute exposure there was nothing there.
That is one faint planetary.
patrick
p.s. 'Course if I sent the data to Tyler he could probably extract it. :)
On 15 Feb 2009, at 18:56, Debbie wrote:
I'm dusting off my telescope this weekend to get it ready for some
prime winter
observing. I'm hoping to bag a few large planetary nebulae like Abell 31.
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