Planetary Nebula Discovered By Amateur Astronomer

Gemini Observatory image of Kronberger 61 showing the ionized shell of expelled gas resembling a soccer ball.

The light of the nebula here is primarily due to emission from twice-ionized oxygen, and its central star can be seen as the slightly bluer star very close to the center of the nebula.

The field of view is 2.2 x 3.4 arcminutes with north up (rotated 22 degrees west of north). Image processing by Travis Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage.

A colour composite image, it consists of two narrow-band images ([O III] and hydrogen alpha with three, 500-second integrations each) obtained with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i.

Below the bright star at left is a barred spiral galaxy in the distant background, careful inspection will reveal several additional distant galaxies in the image.