Letter to the Editor

A deep mosaic of [O III]5007 Å CCD images of the environment of the LBV star P Cygni

¹ Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics, National Observatory of Athens, I. Metaxa & V. Paulou, P. Penteli, 15236 Athens, Greece e-mail: ptb@astro.noa.gr
² Jodrell Bank Observatory, University of Manchester, Macclesfield SK11 9DL, UK
³ Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Cosmic Physics, 5 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Republic of Ireland
⁴ Technological Education Institute of Crete, General Department of Applied Science, PO Box 1939, GR-710 04 Heraklion, Crete, Greece

Received: 14 July 2006
Accepted: 1 August 2006

Abstract

A mosaic of six, deep, CCD images in the light of the [O iii]5007 Å nebular emission line has been obtained with the 1.3-m Skinakas (Crete) telescope of the filamentary nebulosity surrounding P Cygni. The [O iii]5007 Å line discriminates against confusing galactic Hii regions along the same sight-lines and the new mosaic did not include the 4.8 mag. central star; a source of artifacts in the previous lower angular resolution observations. New giant “lobes” and “shells” are found to be clustered around P Cygni which must be the relics of historic eruptions between 2400 and up to ≈10⁵ yr ago.