Bipolar Hα Jets of KX Andromedae

Image Title: DSC – Diving deep into KX And's deathrays

Copyright: Deep Sky Collective

Date image was taken: October 20, 2025

Location: Europe and USA

Data Acquisition Method: Other

Description and Details: KX And is a bipolar outflow that originates from the Roche Lobe overflow of the secondary star onto the Be star, where the accumulated matter is expelled into space perpendicularly to the system. This results in the bidirectional outstream that is then likely ionised by the Be star itself, giving rise to the Ha jets.
As part of this project we focused on just H-alpha and O[III], aiming to fully reveal all features in these wavelengths. We did not attempt any S[II] although that certainly would have been interesting as well.
In the end our H-alpha data revealed the full stream, as known from previous renditions of the region, however we also picked up its outer shell, in what we believe to be its full extent. Note that existing images already show this outer H-alpha shell but are lacking signal to see clearly. Besides this H-alpha shell we also had a bit of a surprise regarding our 240h+ O[III] gamble – here no previous image went deep enough to show any definitive structure, however in our new dataset we confirmed the existence of an extensive outer O[III] shell. This O[III] shell is nearly identical to the H-alpha one in many places, with the key differences being that it does not have any small scale structures and extends further, especially in the southern jet.

For the project we managed to get a total of 691h11m of integration, about 240h of which are found in both H-alpha and O[III] and the rest consisting of LRGB data.

Name: Tim Schaeffer

Email: Tim.Schaeffer30@gmail.com

Website or Facebook Profile: http://deepskycollective.com

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