ASTRO: vdB 140

VdB 140 is a rather featureless reflection nebula illuminated by the
star SAO 33288 with a parallax that puts it some 2500 light-years away.
It is located in southern Cepheus. It is classed as a B2IIIe star, a
giant blue star with emission lines. It is slightly variable between
magnitude 6.45 and 6.51. It is also a double star with a separation of
about 4" of arc. The companion is magnitude 12.0 so lost in the glare.
There's a third member about 69" of arc away at magnitude 12.6. It's
the blue star nearly directly west of SA0 33288. Whether it is a true
companion or just line of sight I don't know.

I've been imaging a few of the small vdB objects at much higher
resolution than they are normally seen. The result has usually been a
lot more detail than is seen in the low resolution images. Not this
time. It just doesn't have any fine detail it would seem. This was
taken on a somewhat better night than others that preceded it. Still it
was far from a "good" night so color is a bit noisier than I'd like.
Due to the lack of detail I doubt I'll be revisiting it.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
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