Beginning of the creation of God Jesus Christ our Lord it is written in the Holy King James Bible the revelation of the Lord according to saint John the apostle 50 AD Anno Domini in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ Revelation 3:11-17 Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. 12 Him that overcometh shall I make a pillar in the temple of my God & he shall go no more out: & I shall write upon him the name of my God & the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: & I shall write upon him my new name. 13 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. 14 & unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; 15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16 So then because thou art lukewarm & neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. 17 Because thou sayest, I am rich & increased with goods & have need of nothing; & knowest not that thou art wretched & miserable & poor & blind & naked: amen NGC 6729 (also cataloged as Caldwell 68) is one of the most dynamic, rapidly changing reflection emission nebulae in the night sky. Located in the southern constellation Corona Australis (The Southern Crown), it is a classic example of a variable nebula, where the physical shape & brightness pattern of the dust clouds shift noticeably over the course of weeks & months. It sit nestled inside the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud, a dense, dark stellar nursery that is one of the closest star-forming region to our solar system.
Astronomical Dimension & Profile Approximately 424 light-years away from Earth. True Physical Size: Highly compact, spanning only about 0.08 light-years (roughly 5,000 Astronomical Units) across its primary visible fan. Apparent Size: 1.4 \times 1.3 arcminutes. Coordinate (J2000): RA 19 h 01m 54.3 s Dec 36 circ 57' 12". The Dynamic Engine: R Coronae Australis Much like its famous northern counterpart, Hubble’s Variable Nebula (NGC 2261), NGC 6729 is shaped like a distinct cosmic fan or comet. At the absolute apex (the "head") of this fan lies the wildly unstable young star R Coronae Australis (R CrA). R CrA is a pre-main-sequence Herbig Ae/Be star that is still actively gathering mass from its surrounding birthplace. The nebula changes its appearance dramatically over short period due to a combination of two distinct cosmic mechanisms: 1. Shadow-Play across the Dust The infant star is girdled by a dense, spinning, unequal ring of circumstellar dust (an accretion disk) viewed nearly edge-on from Earth. As this uneven ring rotate close to the star, structural clump of dust act like a cosmic fan blade, casting immense, moving shadows across the outer, larger reflection cloud. When a shadow passes over a section of the nebula, it dim; when the shadow clear, the dust light up again, creating the illusion that the entire nebula is morphing or expanding. 2. Violent Accretion Outbursts R CrA undergoes sudden, erratic growth spurts. When large clump of gas crash onto the stellar surface, the star flares up in brightness. This surge of energy take time to travel outward through the light-years of dust, causing ripples of light (light echoes) to visibly wash across NGC 6729 over the span of several weeks. Herbig-Haro Objects: Squeezing Out Molecular Jets NGC 6729 is not just a passive reflection cloud reflecting blue starlight. It is a violent battlefield of protostellar outflows.
The magnetic fields at the poles of R CrA act like high-pressure nozzles, shooting out supersonic jets of gas into the surrounding dark void. As these high-velocity jets slam into the cold, stagnant gas of the wider Corona Australis cloud, they create powerful bow shocks that heat up & glow via emission. This glowing shock front is cataloged as Herbig-Haro (HH) objects. The area immediately surrounding NGC 6729 is littered with them (specifically HH 96 to HH 101). They show up in deep narrowband imaging as distinct, hyper-detailed red knots & filaments of ionized hydrogen & sulfur gas tracing the pathways of the star’s invisible polar exhaust lines. Observing & Astrophotography Challenge Because it sit deep in the southern celestial hemisphere, NGC 6729 is best observed from southern latitude or low northern latitude during the summer months. Visual Observation: It is a moderate-to-difficult target for amateur telescopes due to its southern declination. An 8 to 10 inch telescope under dark sky will reveal it as a small, faint, ghostly teardrop or fan-shaped smudge attached to the star R CrA. A nearby variable star, T CrA, sit just to the east & power it own smaller, separate reflection patch, providing a striking visual pairing. Astrophotography: Capturing NGC 6729 require a long focal length setup (such as a Schmidt-Cassegrain or a Ritchey-Chrétien telescope) to isolate tiny, intricate structures. Broad-spectrum LRGB imaging capture the smooth, deep-blue reflection dust illuminated by R CrA, while adding narrow H alpha data is essential to make the intricate, sprawling red loop networks of the surrounding Herbig-Haro objects jump out against the intense, opaque black backdrop of the Corona Australis dark cloud.
NGC 6729 was discovered in 1861 by the German astronomer and geologist Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt. Schmidt discovered the nebula while serving as the director of the Athens Observatory in Greece. He spotted the small, faint, comet-like patch of dust using a 6.2-inch Plössl refractor telescope . Shortly after finding it, Schmidt noticed that both the nebula itself &it central star, R Coronae Australis, were erratic & variable in brightness. This made NGC 6729 only the third "variable nebula" ever identified by astronomers following Hind's Variable Nebula & Hubble's Variable Nebula May the Holy Roman Catholic Church study the stars as Galileo Galilee so interpret time & season topredict the return of our Lord Christ Jesus be blessed by God the Father God the Son & God the Holy Spirit Hallelujah Hallelujah Blessed be the word of the Lord for Christ is risen Hallelujah Hallelujah peace be still in Nomine Patris et FiLii et Spiritus Sancti amen & amen