Bow Tie Nebula NGC 40 Is a Planetary Nebula in Constellation Cepheus

Summary: The Bow Tie Nebula NGC 40 is a planetary nebula in constellation Cepheus and owes its discovery Nov. 25, 1788, to Uranus discoverer Sir William Herschel.

Composite X-ray (blue)/optical (red) image of planetary nebula NGC 40 shows shell of multimillion degree gas (blue), compressed and heated by a 2-million-miles-per-hour stellar wind; the nebula (red) represents ejected matter that has been heated to about 10,000 degrees Celsius by radiation from the nebula’s star; bright point is NGC 40 nebula’s central star, which has a surface temperature of about 50,000 degrees Celsius: NASA/CXC/RIT/J. (Joel) Kastner & R. (Rodolpho) Montez (X-ray credit); NSF/AURA/NOAO/WIYN (Optical credit), via NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory

The Bow Tie Nebula NGC 40 is a planetary nebula in Cepheus the King constellation that was discovered Nov. 25, 1788, by Sir William Herschel, seven years eight-plus months after his March 13, 1781, discovery of the solar system’s seventh planet, Uranus.

Sir William (Nov. 15, 1738-Aug. 25, 1822) recorded his discovery of the Cepheid planetary nebula as number 58 within his planetary nebula category. He determined the nebula’s location by way of fifth magnitude star 24 Cephei. Sir William described IV-58 as having a “very faint milky nebulosity.”

Sir William’s IV-58 is now known as NGC (New General Catalogue) 40. The Cepheid planetary nebula appears as number 40 in A New General Catalogue, published in 1888 by Danish-Irish astronomer John Louis Emil Dreyer (Feb. 13, 1852-Sept. 14, 1926).

NGC 40 is located in Cepheus the King, one of the Northern Hemisphere’s five circumpolar constellations. The Northern Hemisphere’s circumpolar constellations lie closest to the celestial north pole.

The planetary nebula’s equatorial coordinates are right ascension of 00 hours 13 minutes 01.030 seconds, declination of plus 72 degrees 31 minutes 19.00 seconds (epoch J2000.0), according to the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic (NED) Database. Right ascension (abbreviated RA; symbol α) and declination (abbreviated dec; symbol δ) are the celestial counterparts to terrestrial longitude and latitude, respectively.

The planetary nebula’s “determining star,” 24 Cephei, is identified in the Hipparcos Catalogue as HIP 109400. The Hipparcos Catalogue, released in June 1997, provides precise astrometric data for 118,218 stars. The catalogue’s data comes from Hipparcos (High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite), a scientific satellite launched Aug. 8, 1989, by the European Space Agency (ESA) and deactivated Aug. 15, 1993.

The equatorial coordinates for HIP 109400 (24 Cephei) are right ascension of 22:09:48.430, declination of plus 72:20:28.34, according to Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA). Hubble Legacy Archive is an online project of Hubble products jointly administered by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF) and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC).

A planetary nebula forms from ionized gases ejected by a dying star. The dying central star in NGC 40 has a surface temperature of about 50,000 degrees Celsius, according to Rochester Institute of Technology’s press release of May 30, 2005. The ejected matter that shapes NGC 40’s nebula heats to about 10,000 degrees from the hot, dying star’s radiation. The central star’s stellar wind of 2 million miles per hour compresses and heats a shell of multimillion degree gas, according to a study in the December 2005 issue of the Astrophysics Journal. The hot bubble of gas also heats previously ejected gas to the point of emitting X-rays, according to the study’s team of Rodolpho Montez Jr. of the University of Rochester, Joel Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Orsola de Marco of New York’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and Noam Soker of the Technion Institute in Haifa, Israel.

The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) collected astrometric and photometric data of 99.998 percent of the near-infrared celestial sphere between June 1997 and February 2001. The survey’s Atlas Images combine “raw survey data frames (which were taken six-deep in any direction in the sky) into a final uniform image.”

The Two Micron All Sky Survey’s website describes the Atlas Image of NGC 40 as revealing “an elliptical-shaped shell highlighted by the bright east and west lobes. NGC 40 is fated to fade away, while the central star eventually classifies as a white dwarf with a cooling off lasting “over billions of years.”

The takeaways for the Bow Tie Nebula NGC 40 in Cepheus the King constellation are that the planetary nebula, which was discovered by Uranus discoverer William Herschel, has an elliptical shape and that the present phase of superheated gas has created an X-ray emitting shell within NGC 40.

Planetary nebula NGC 40, discovered by Uranus discover Sir William Herschel, is located in Cepheus the King constellation, at a distance of about 3,000 light years from Earth; composite Chandra X-ray (red)/NOAO optical (black and white) image of NGC 40 presents “an alternative false-color scheme of the dying, Sun-like star”: NASA/CXC/RIT/J. (Joel) Kastner & R. (Rodolpho) Montez (X-ray credit); NSF/AURA/NOAO/WIYN (Optical credit), via NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Composite X-ray (blue)/optical (red) image of planetary nebula NGC 40 shows shell of multimillion degree gas (blue), compressed and heated by a 2-million-miles-per-hour stellar wind; the nebula (red) represents ejected matter that has been heated to about 10,000 degrees Celsius by radiation from the nebula’s star; bright point is NGC 40 nebula’s central star, which has a surface temperature of about 50,000 degrees Celsius: NASA/CXC/RIT/J. (Joel) Kastner & R. (Rodolpho) Montez (X-ray credit); NSF/AURA/NOAO/WIYN (Optical credit), via NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory @ http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/05_releases/press_060605.html

Planetary nebula NGC 40, discovered by Uranus discover Sir William Herschel, is located in Cepheus the King constellation, at a distance of about 3,000 to 4,000 light years from Earth; composite Chandra X-ray (red)/NOAO optical (black and white) image of NGC 40 presents “an alternative false-color scheme of the dying, Sun-like star”: NASA/CXC/RIT/J. (Joel) Kastner & R. (Rodolpho) Montez (X-ray credit); NSF/AURA/NOAO/WIYN (Optical credit), via NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory @ http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/n40/more.html

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