Longmore 8 Planetary Nebula

“The Hamster Wheel”

Longmore 8, also known as ESO 382-63 and PK 310+24.1, is a delicate celestial ghost haunting the southern reaches of Centaurus. This image here includes the entire outer shell and is the only image of this I could find. The outer structures around this planetary nebula were discovered by the Galactic Planetary Nebula Halo Survey (GPNHS) team in May 2016.

This planetary nebula represents a fleeting, poetic moment in the life cycle of a star similar to our own Sun. As the central star reached the end of its nuclear fuel, it gently shed its outer layers into the cold vacuum of space, creating a shimmering, translucent shell of ionized gas. Unlike the violent cataclysms of supernovae, this expansion is a graceful transition, where the exposed, scorching-hot core—a fledgling white dwarf—floods the surrounding nebula with ultraviolet light, causing it to glow with a soft, ethereal radiance.

 Visually, Longmore 8 is a testament to the intricate symmetry found in the cosmos. Often appearing as a faint, circular, or slightly elliptical smudge against the dense star fields of the Milky Way, its subtle structure reveals the complex interplay between stellar winds and magnetic fields. Because it is relatively low in surface brightness, it remains a hidden gem, typically reserved for the long-exposure eyes of large telescopes rather than a casual glance. To study this nebula is to look into the far-distant future of our own solar system, capturing a final, beautiful exhale of a star before it fades into the dark permanence of a stellar remnant.

To the lower left is spiral galaxy NGC 5121 is a reasonably bright galaxy (11.5 magnitude) 1.9' x 1.4' in size.

Imaged in RGBHaO3 on a Planewave CDK 24 at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile. Taken Moravian C5.

60 x 300 sec for each R-G-B, 78 x 600 sec for HA and 90 x 600 sec for O3.

SWOS Group, Mazlin, Parker, Forman, Magill, Hanson

Enjoy, Mark