When NGC 6826 Doesn’t Blink

NGC 6826, The Blinking Planetary Nebula
Sketch and Details by Serge Vieillard, translation by Frank McCabe

Our club organized a trip for visual telescope use at the observatory to Astroqueyras of St Véran. Six members of the group for 9 days (from the 18 to 26 of October, 2008) observed during the pre-winter period, with a program focused mainly on planetary nebulae. These were our preferred targets using the 9 m focal length Cassegrain telescope of 62 cm aperture.
Weather conditions were not optimal, but each period of good seeing was used to the maximum.
We familiarized ourselves with the instrument the first night and pointed it at obvious targets…. We spent a considerable length of time on NGC 6826, the blinking planetary with a blue in color at magnifications up to 1900x. With this instrument at these high magnifications, the central star does not blink and the central shell shows a very special form with an edge almost straight. The external hull shows zones that are nearly symmetrical and alternating between bright and dark but aspect slightly different…. Some details of contours and nuances ideally complement this observation.