Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Vulpecula (Vul)  ·  Contains:  Dumbbell Nebula  ·  M 27  ·  NGC 6853
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M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula, Simon Wilson
M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula
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M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula, Simon Wilson
M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula

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Description

I collected data on this last summer and was going to add to it this year but decided in the end I probably had enough to make a decent image out of it. 

I used a combination of short / long exposures to put together a blended composite image of the very bright core and much fainter outer structure.  The Ha stacks were used as a luminance layer for both the core and outer regions. The ImageBlend and SelectiveColourCorrection scripts in Pixinsight were very useful to aid the assembly of the image. A short amount of RGB data was used for the stars.

M27 is one of the brightest planetary nebulae in the sky and (the bright core at least) is visible in binoculars.  It lies around 1000 light years away from us.  Planetary nebulae are formed around stars in the last stages of life as they shed their outer layers and is a fate expected to befall our own sun a few billion years from now.

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M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula, Simon Wilson