M97 - a tawdry owl (Tom Gray)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 97 · NGC 3587 · Owl Nebula · PK148+57.1

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M97 - a tawdry owl

Revision title: A little more detail in the core

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M97 - a tawdry owl

Revision title: A little more detail in the core

A rather tawdry image of the owl nebula, taken under a bright moon with my L-eNhance filter and Hypercam 183C. At this time of year the tawny owls are in good voice, and often call to each other through the night; this planetary nebula with its unmistakable hollow eyes, was calling out to me to have a go.

Captured at f10 in my SCT, this image comprises just over two hours data before the owl descended into the trees for the night. I used 120s exposures, gain 300 and offset 20 with 2x2 binning to try and capture sufficient SNR.

Apart from rather a lot of amp glow the image does at least show the inner and outer shells of this planetary nebula with characteristic strong oxygen core and hydrogen fringing. Star colours are bland with my L-eNhance filter, but the progenitor star is clearly visible at the centre of the PN.

M97 lies ~2000 LY away, and is about 8000 years old. It was first sketched by Lord Rosse in 1848 using his giant 72" reflector at Birr Castle, Ireland. Here is my humble effort with an 8" SCT in 2022.

Original
Final
B

B

Title: A little more detail in the core

Description: My darks do not appear to have removed all the amp glow, so I have reprocessed this to give a little more detail in the core, and remove excessive noise from the background. Processed in Startools with final noise reduction and image smoothing using GreyCStoration tool in Nebulosity v4.

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Optolong L-eNhance filter
UK Astro-Imaging
Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5590150
PixInsight job	EWFBDG71EJ2LLOHLQK41MBMSJIGRR7A5
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	11h14m51s.492
RA (top/left)	11h16m13s.787
RA (top/right)	11h13m37s.230
RA (bottom/right)	11h13m29s.560
RA (bottom/left)	11h16m05s.582

Dec (center)	+54°59′37″.70
Dec (top/left)	+55°06′21″.43
Dec (top/right)	+55°07′53″.93
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°52′47″.14
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°51′13″.58

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M97 - a tawdry owl

Revision title: A little more detail in the core

M97 - a tawdry owl

Revision title: A little more detail in the core

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M97 - a tawdry owl

Revision title: A little more detail in the core

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