Sh2-302, also known as the Snowman Nebula, is an ionized hydrogen (Hii) emission nebula. It is located in the constellation Puppis. It is about 5,800 light years away. Also designated as LBN 1046, this object is classified as an emission nebula because it contains ionized hydrogen. It’s part of the Gum Nebula, which occupies the lower southern skies in our winter. The nebula has a visual diameter of 15 arc minutes. It is located near the boundary between Puppis and Canis Major.
Sh2-302 is one of many objects in a catalog compiled by astronomer Stewart Sharpless to identify areas of interstellar ionized hydrogen, or HII regions. I’ve enjoyed imaging items from this catalog over the fall/winter months as we await galaxy season.
A dark band crosses it on the southeast side. It is part of a molecular nebulous complex located at the outer edge of the Orion Arm. This complex is about 1800 parsecs (about 5900 light-years) away. Sh2-302 contains a molecular bipolar jet in its interior. A very massive protostar probably generates this jet. It originated from the impact between the ionized region and the surrounding molecular cloud.
Other star-forming phenomena are witnessed by the presence of the small open cluster NGC 2409, which size is just 0.1 parsecs, formed by twenty stars and located a short distance from the IRAS source. On the eastern edge of the nebula, a small part of the dust is illuminated by a star of the tenth magnitude. This forms the reflection nebula cataloged as vdB 97.
I captured this photograph from my driveway using a Skywatcher Esprit 120ED telescope at a fl of 840mm and a ZWO ASI2600MC Pro astrophotography camera. These are mounted on a Skywatcher EQ6r Pro German Equatorial Mount. The image acquisition software I used to control everything is APT 4.60 (Astro Photography Tool). Total exposure of 13 hrs. 75 exposures were integrated and processed using Pixinsight.
