G314.5-01.0

G314.5-01.0 (usual name – PHR1432-6138) is a member of the MASH (Macquarie/AAO/Strasbourg/H-a) Planetary Galactic Catalog of 905 true, likely or possible planetary nebula (PN) compiled from the AAO/UKST H-a survey of the southern galactic plane. It was a 7-year program to identify and spectrally confirm PN candidates. G314.5-01.0 is indicated as a true PN. I could not find a reference for its distance. It is incredibly faint and better suited to meter-class systems, but as usual, astrophotographers have potentially unlimited time on their systems, so in this case, I was able to collect over 23 hours of data this month, including 12 hours of 3 nm OIII and 9.5 hours of H-a + N[II] (5 nm) using 30-minute guided exposures on the 0.5 m reflector. H-a was color-mapped to red/magenta and OIII to blue/green to simulate “natural” color. Short RGB data were added for star color. The object is about 4.5′ in diameter. The H-a shows an array of small tendrils. A close-up cropped version is shown below.