NGC 3199

NGC 3199 (RCW 48) is a bright, 20’ crescent-shaped nebula in the southern constellation of Carina about 12,000 light years distant.  Deeper images, as presented above, show the bright crescent to be part of a larger elliptical bubble.  It is referred to as a ring nebula and is associated with a galactic Wolf-Rayet star (HD 89358), which is not at the center of the bubble (see smaller image below). This could suggest that the WR star has moved since the nebula was formed.   It resides in a diffuse HII region as shown by the faint background nebulosity. This image was taken with 25 hours of exposures using narrowband filters for high contrast to bring out the faint structures in the nebula.  The narrowband data were mapped to “natural” colors.   North is up and to the right and the image size is about 32’.  Some references are:

Dyson and Ghanbari, , Astron. Astrophys. 226, 270-277, 1989
Whitehead, Meaburn and Goudis, Astron. Astrophys. 196, 261-265, 1988)