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Amateur Astronomer Discovers New Nebula
pease1 writes "The
BBC is
reporting on an amateur astronomer in the US who has detected, using a tiny 3-inch telescope and a CCD camera, the emergence of a young star from the cocoon of gas and dust in which it was born. The discovery image is
here. Within hours, some of the largest telescopes on Earth had been redirected to image the new find. If you have a larger telescope and are heading out this weekend,
here is a good finder chart, as this object has been sighted visually."
New star emerges from dust cocoon
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
An amateur astronomer in the US has detected the emergence of a young star from the cocoon of gas and dust in which it was born.
Such an event has only rarely been recorded by astronomers.
"This is exciting for all astronomers, especially those interested in the birth of stars," University of Hawaii astronomer Bo Reipurth told the BBC.
"We tend to think of the sky as fixed and unchanging, so when we see something new it's important," he said.
The new object was first spotted on 23 January by amateur astronomer Jay McNeil from his observatory at Paducah in Kentucky.
"The entire discovery was quite serendipitous in nature," he told BBC News Online.
While looking at star formation regions in the constellation of Orion, he noticed a star not present in previous sky surveys.
"I have spent countless hours seeking out the darkest of skies and peering into the largest of telescopes at distant galaxies, so who would have known that I would take an image of a famous object with a small telescope from my back yard and find a sun-like star being born."
The new object had appeared alongside the well-known gas cloud known as Messier 78.
"The new object was just a faint smudge. I contacted Brian Skiff at the Lowell Observatory who also realised it was new," says McNeil.
Suspecting that it was a young star that had just broken out of its birth cloud of gas and dust, McNeil then contacted star formation expert Bo Reipurth.
Reipurth arranged for follow-up observations to be carried out using the University of Hawaii 2.2 metre telescope, and then using the giant 8-metre Gemini telescope, also in Hawaii.
McNeil was amazed at the train of events following his discovery, "The idea that this thing, first seen on my 3-inch telescope, which one can easily hold using one hand, would be observed, within 48 hours, by a telescope of 342 tons was absolutely staggering."
Following those observations Reipurth told BBC News Online: "The young star was embedded in its placental nebula. Now it has brightened, and like a lighthouse it is casting its light across the landscape of dust and gas around it."
"We know of many small nebula like this scattered throughout the sky but it is very rare to see an event like this. We know very little about these objects and do not know what to expect next."
An urgent appeal has gone out to astronomers to monitor the object which is now known as McNeil's nebula.
"We will lose it in about six weeks when Orion goes behind the Sun. We will then have to wait until the autumn for it to be observable again. I expect it will have changed by then," says Reipurth.
"I'm thrilled to have found it and to be a part of such a great effort," says McNeil.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
There are plenty of databases. This isn't a sudden discovery of something that was always there - when it comes to deep space (i.e., not solar system) objects, you wouldn't find anything that had always been there and that wasn't already known using just a 3 in. scope; this is an honest-to-goodness new star that just started lighting up the surrounding nebula.
Upon RTFAing, it's not a new nebula, it's a new star which has emerged from an existing nebula: M78, a diffuse nebula in Orion. Is 8x6 arc minutes a very large dimension? Our charts are going to need updating.
Many of the objects amateur astronomers observe can be found on the NGC/IC Project website. This is a particularly fine reference because it includes many corrections to the current NGC(New General Catalogue) and IC(Index Catalogue).
As a point of interest, Brian Skiff of Lowell Observatory and a team member of the NGC/IC Project, was instrumental in assisting McNeil in securing telescope time on the giant 8-meter Gemini telescope in Hawaii so followup observations of the newly discovered nebula could be made.
Other members of the NGC/IC Project team are Harold Corwin, Steve Gottlieb, Wolfgang Steinicke,Brent Archinal, Steve Coe, Glen Deen, Jenni Kay and Bob Erdmann.
Hubble images of M78 (The originating nebula from which this star is emerging) were NASA's Astronomy Picture Of the Day late last January and can be found here
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Many people don't realize that a very large percentage of new celestial bodies are discovered by amateur astronomers with only small scopes, or even no scopes at all. Professionals, when working professionally, tend to focus on particular spots in the sky, studying a single object to learn everything they can about it. Amateurs, on the other hand, look at objects all over the night sky, and are more likely to see an object not previously charted. These discoveries are then focused on by the professionals to pour over with the large scopes and do the big science on, but it's always nice to see an amateur get his/her due in the discovery of a new object.
Not stars, per se, but nebulosities, because they are easy to mistake for comets and so tend to be well documented and well known to amateur astronomers, many of whom do a lot of comet hunting. From looking at the finding charts, it looks like this was a known dark cloud that has just been lit up.