IC289 Photographed by Michelle Stone

IC289 in Casseopeia
One of my astronomer buddies and I were searching the heavans in December for a comet that had reportedly brightened. We extrapolated the coordinates based on the data we had and searched the region in the sky for the object.
Right where it should have been, we found the object presented here. John !", I blurted out as I first looked through his 18" scope, "that's a planetary! And it is huge!" Out came the star charts and we carefully searched the data in the dim red light of our diode flashlights.
No planetary. For 20 minutes or so, we strongly suspected that indeed what we were seeing could very well be the comet. I decided to set up the CCD and see if I could detect motion among the background stars. It didn't move. No comet. But this thing was big and easily seen... why was it not in any of our charts. I finally pulled out the "big gun", the Millenium Star Atlas. Sure enough, there it was. So, we didn't find a comet. But the chase was pretty fun. And I got an intersting CCD shot out of it. You can actually see a wagon wheel structure spreading outward from the central star. This exposure is composed of 10 one minute shots in binned mode at F10. SXH516, C11.