NGC 6803 - Planetary Nebula
NGC 6803 is a very small planetary nebula in the northern part of the constellation Aquila and is located only about 1° away from another PN (NGC 6804).
The object was discovered in September 1882 by the American astronomer Edward Charles Pickering.
The distance is given as 8,000 light years, but values of 6,000 light years can also be found. With an apparent diameter of 5" (arc seconds), the true
diameter of the nebula envelope is 0.2 light years, which is a very small value for a planetary nebula. The apparent brightness is 11.4mag, so that
NGC 6803 can be seen even in small telescopes of 4" aperture.
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In a 20" telescope, at 120x you will initially only see a bright star-like dot, which responds very well to a filter blink. This means that the brightness
of the planetary nebula changes compared to the brightness of surrounding field stars when you hold a nebular fiter in front of the eyepiece. The stars
become darker, the nebula remains about the same brightness. In this way, you can identify a tiny planetary nebula very quickly.
At a magnification of 270x, the PN then shows a small disc whose brightness increases strongly towards the centre, but without really becoming dot-like.
In this respect, it is probably not the central star.
