"M76 is a planetary nebula, which is an expanding shell of gas around an aging or dying star, and it is one of only four planetary nebulas in Charles Messier’s catalog. M76 is located in the constellation Perseus and is approximately 2,500 light-years away from Earth.
Discovered in 1780 by Messier’s colleague Pierre Méchain, M76 has an apparent magnitude of 12 and is best viewed in December."
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/messier-76This is the third fascinating Planetary Nebula we worked with data acquired in Dec 2019. Another session done in March 2020 was washed out by moonlight. Also in the work process, the calibration frames still were not well done.
The data still is not good at all, for a target of this kind needs better seeing conditions, and maybe more time exposure. Our OTA is in the limit range but I think it can be done better even with it, but for sure with more focal length it should be better. This process also breaks the quantity of data integrated, we passed the hour!
During the process of the image it was done several tries to push some details and color. These two versions show this intention.
I hope we get back to this little beauty gem of the sky again.
Process April 22th, 2020
https://twitter.com/AstroOtus/status/1424140174246744065
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