Messier 97

Right Ascension	11 : 14.8 (h:m)
Declination	+55 : 01 (deg:m)
Distance	2.6 (kly)
Visual Brightness	9.9 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	3.4x3.3 (arc min)

Dicovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781.

The Owl Nebula Messier 97 (M97, NGC 3587) is one of the fainter objects in Messier's catalog. It is one of the four planetary nebulae in that catalog, and situated in constellation Ursa Major.

M97 was discovered by Pierre Méchain on February 16, 1781. In his description of this object, Charles Messier also mentions two other nebulous objects that he (and Méchain) have seen at about the same time, but which he had not added in his printed catalog version of 1781 (in the Connoissance des Temps for 1784). As the description is obvious and he added positions by hand in his personal copy, as well as descriptions in his manuscript personal pre-print version, we now know that he had observed the objects M108 and M109. Admiral William H. Smyth first classified it as planetary nebulae in 1844. The name "Owl Nebula" goes back to Lord Rosse, who first used it in 1848; see his drawing. In 1866, William Huggins recognized its nature as a gaseous nebula from the observation of its spectrum, where he discovered two spectral lines.

As often for planetary nebulae, the Owl is significantly brighter visually (Machholz: 9.7 mag, Hynes: 9.9 mag) than photographically (about 12.0 mag), as most light is emitted in one green spectral line (see our Planetary Nebulae page). Its distance is uncertain; the Sky Catalog 2000 has 1,300 light years (400 pc), I.S. Shklovsky 1,430, O'Dell and Kohoutek independently found 1,600 in the early 1960s, Cudworth (1974) 2,600 (our value), Becvar's Atlas Coeli Catalog 7,460, Vorontsov-Velyaminov published 8,150, Kenneth Glyn Jones gives 10,000, and Kaufmann has 12,000 light years (some of these values quoted from Burnham).

M97 is one of the more complex planetary nebulae. Its appearance has been interpreted as that of a cylindrical torus shell (or globe without poles), viewed oblique, so that the projected matter-poor ends of the cylinder correspond to the owl's eyes. This shell is enveloped by a fainter nebula of lower ionization. The mass of the nebula has been estimated to amount 0.15 solar masses, while the 16 mag central star is believed to be of about 0.7 solar masses. Its dynamical age is about 6,000 years. (from Stephen J. Hynes, Planetary Nebulae).

An outer halo was detected comparatively late for M97 only, in 1991 by Karen B. Kwitter (Manchado et.al. 1992, Kwitter et.al. 1993).

The DSSM image of M97 reveals that in the background of this nebula, there are several small nebulous objects, most probably very distant galaxies, the brightest of these objects being superimposed by the brighter star above and slightly left of M97. This brightest background object can be found on many larger-field exposures of the Owl Nebula (also is some of the amateur images in our collection).

NGC Online data for M97

References

• Martín A. Guerrero, You-Hua Chu, Arturo Manchado, and Karen B. Kwitter, 2003. Physical Structure of Planetary Nebulae. I. The Owl Nebula. The Astronomical Journal, Volume 125, Issue 6, pp. 3213-3221 (June 2003). [ADS: 2003AJ....125.3213G]
• Karen B. Kwitter, You-Hua Chu, and R.A. Downes, 1993. CCD Imaging of Planetary Nebula Halos. Planetary nebulae: proceedings of the 155 Symposium of the International Astronomical Union; held in Innsbruck; Austria; July 1317; 1992. Edited by Ronald Weinberger and Agnes Acker. International Astronomical Union. Symposium no. 155; Kluwer Academic Publishers; Dordrecht, p. 209. [ADS: 1993IAUS..155..209K]
• Arturo Manchado, Martín A. Guerrero, Karen B. Kwitter, and You-Hua Chu, 1992. A Halo of Red Giant Wind around the Owl Nebula. American Astronomical Society, 181st AAS Meeting, #67.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 24, p. 1227 (December 1992). [ADS: 1992AAS...181.6704M]

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Last Modification: October 28, 2018