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Nothing better preparing for a great night of imaging at CAV than partaking in a southern boil dinner at the Conrad Astroestate! And after filling the belly with delicious boiled prawn and getting crushed racing model cars by Mario Andretti (aka Barry Riu) at the Conrad Entertainment Emporium, I waddle to my observatory to capture some southern celestial prawn. Attached is a 5 hour narrowband (Hubble palette) Prawn Nebula (IC4628) exposure binned 2×2 using the 14.5-inch RCOS and U16M Apogee camera. Because the Prawn Nebula (in the tail of Scorpius) only attains an elevation of 20 degrees, 3 hours of OIII (blue) was obtained compared to 80 minutes of SII and only 40 minutes of H-alpha to counteract differential atmospheric extinction of blue (see attached extinction chart). Also, the Prawn is laden with H-alpha over OIII to begin with!! A 1.5 hour RGB exposure was also obtained for the purpose of replacing the magenta-rich narrowband stars. Compare the RGB image to the narrowband image and I think it is apparent that the appellation “Prawn” was derived from the narrowband image. Agree?? I believe the prawn’s eyes are the dark spots to the right with his body tailing up to the left and maybe some legs are extending down. An amazing ESO Prawn Nebula image and two APOD Prawn images are seen in the links below.
P.S. – The Prawn Neb is an integral part of the False Comet located in the “Table of Scorpius”. The False Comet looks so much like a real comet that I had mistaken it for Halley’s Comet in 1986 when viewing Scorpius from a dark sky site in the Keys. The Scorpius False Comet was much more impressive than Halley’s Comet which I later found hiding the constellation Lupus.
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1340d/ — Prawn Neb locater chart
http://www.cloudynights.com/page/articles/cat/column/binocular-universe/binocular-universe-the-table-of-scorpius-r2564 — Great article about False Comet and Table of Scorpius
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1340a/ — European Southern Obs. Prawn image
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160704.html — latest Prawn APOD
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061020.html –– Martin Pugh APOD