NGC 7048 - Planetary Nebula
NGC 7048 is a planetary nebula located about 6° east of Deneb in the constellation "Cygnus" and was discovered on October 19, 1878 by the
astronomer Edouard Stephan.
The distance to this PN is stated to be 5,300 light-years, and the apparent size is almost exactly one arcminute. From this, the true diameter of
NGC 7048 can be determined to be 1.6 light-years. With a visual magnitude of 12.1mag and its low surface brightness the nebula does not
belong to the easy objects of its kind.
The central star appears very faint even on low exposure images and will not be visually observable even with large telescopes.
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The planetary nebula appears in my 20" f/3 at low magnification as an easily detectable brightening in the eyepiece, which can be easily held
with indirect vision. Then at 270x in conjunction with an UHC filter some more structures become visible. For example, the western side appears
slightly brighter, while the nebula envelope appears slightly darker in the center and to the north. You also get the impression of a faint ring
structure.
As expected, the central star was not visible. But a faint star can be found at the northern edge of the bubble.
