Updates:

(September 14, 2023): Astrophotographers Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner, and Yann Sainty have won Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year for their photo of the glowing arc of gas near Andromeda Galaxy. László Francsics, judge and astrophotographer, says "This astrophoto is as spectacular as [it is] valuable. It not only presents Andromeda in a new way, but also raises the quality of astrophotography to a higher level."


Green arc floats above the Andromeda Galaxy
A composite image including filters for hydrogen-alpha (red) and doubly ionized oxygen (green) reveals a large arc near Andromeda Galaxy on the sky.
Yann Sainty and Marcel Drechsler

French and German amateur astronomers have discovered a mysterious nebulous arc close to the Andromeda galaxy (M31), and no one has a clue about its true nature. The arc, detected in the light of doubly ionized oxygen, has never been seen before, and doesn’t seem to radiate at any other wavelength. “The [Andromeda] galaxy has kept one secret for a very long time,” the team comments in a YouTube video about the discovery.

Using sophisticated amateur equipment, Xavier Strottner and Marcel Drechsler have already found dozens of previously unknown planetary nebulae in our galaxy. Last fall, analyzing images obtained by Yann Sainty, they stumbled upon a much larger structure, just 1.2 degrees southeast of Andromeda’s nucleus. The arc extends over 1.5 degrees and ends close to the naked-eye star Nu (ν) Andromedae (the blue star at the top of the photo).

Sainty used a 4.2-inch Takahashi refractor and a large-format ZWO CMOS camera outfitted with a narrow-band filter that only transmits the greenish, 500.7-nanometer light emitted by oxygen atoms that have lost their outermost two electrons (known as the [OIII] line). His wide-angle images added up to a total exposure time of more than 100 hours. Subsequent images, made with five different setups in France and the United States (including S&T editor Sean Walker), have confirmed the existence of the [OIII] arc, which is now known as Strottner-Drechsler-Sainty Object 1 (SDSO-1).

Because of the arc’s huge angular size and its extremely low surface brightness, professional surveys hadn’t previously detected it. A brief paper describing the discovery, written by the three amateur astronomers together with professional researchers, has appeared in Research Notes of the AAS.

So what is it? No one knows. It’s not even clear that the arc is actually related to the Andromeda Galaxy. In principle, it could be part of a nearby, old planetary nebula or supernova remnant in our own Milky Way. However, in that case you would also expect to detect red hydrogen-alpha emission. While such deep exposures (which are part of the composite photo shown above) reveal many emission nebulae in Andromeda’s spiral arms, as well as faint galactic structures in the foreground, they don’t show the newly discovered arc. (S&T's Walker contributed hydrogen-alpha observations from the MDW Sky Survey.)

The team speculates that SDSO-1 could be a bow shock in the stellar halo of M31, caused by its interaction with the halo of the Milky Way — a result of the two galaxies closing in on each other at some 100 kilometers per second (200 million mph). Or it could be a tidal feature, related to streams of stars in Andromeda’s halo. Follow-up spectroscopic observations should reveal the arc’s distance and may shed light on its origin.

“It’s all very impressive,” says Pieter van Dokkum (Yale University), “especially the fact that they organized follow-up observations to confirm [the discovery]. My guess would be that it’s gas in the Milky Way, but of course it would be much more interesting if it’s actually close to M31.”

Within a few weeks, the first part of an upgrade of van Dokkum’s Dragonfly Telephoto Array in New Mexico (see the May 2019 issue of Sky & Telescope) will become operational. “Eventually, Dragonfly will consist of 120 telephoto lenses, each one with tunable, extremely-narrow-band filters, including hydrogen-alpha and [OIII],” he says. “We’re already discussing to image M31 as soon as our first mount is up and running.”


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Nebulae

Comments


Image of misha17

misha17

January 20, 2023 at 12:58 pm

Can they check its spectrum for any Hubble-related red shift?

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Image of Monica Young

Monica Young

January 23, 2023 at 9:44 am

Because it's so close, there wouldn't be any redshift related to the expansion of the universe (and thus its distance). An object would have to be well beyond the Local Group for that - unfortunately! Any measured shift in the spectrum would be related to actual motion of the nebula relative to us.

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Image of epacrislongiflora@tpg.com.au

[email protected]

January 22, 2023 at 11:09 pm

I'm purely an amateur astronomer of 60 years & have no formal training, though have a solid interest in cosmology. Regarding this mysterious nebulous arc adjacent to M31, is it possible it could be the result of a super massive black hole jet from this galaxy's nucleus in eons gone (from our perspective) by this sm black hole when is was on on a feeding frenzy ? That is assuming such a jet is capable of depositing mater well ouside of itself.

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