M76 - Little Dumbbell Nebula (AstroDarkSky)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Perseus (Per) · Contains: Barbell Nebula · Cork Nebula · HD10498 · Little Dumbbell · Little Dumbbell Nebula · M 76 · NGC 650 · NGC 651 · PK130-10.1

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M76 - Little Dumbbell Nebula

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M76 - Little Dumbbell Nebula

Science -

The Little Dumbbell(M76) may resemble its bigger brother M27, but it is trickier to capture considering M27 is 2.5 times larger. The white dwarf is visible in the center. The expanded shells are evidence of the red giant phase expelling its layers into two lobes that have fooled past astronomers into thinking there are two nebulae.
I haven't read any research to confirm this, but it 'looks' like you can see the axis of rotation from the central star forming the shape of the shells based on its spin angle.
What I find really interesting is that there actually is a dust cloud type structure on the left side of my acquisition angle. I would be very interested if that is an object reflected upon in the local area foreground or if is an ejection mass?

Processing notes -

To me at least, it was a very challenging target to process. Dissecting it in Pixinsight felt like needing not just a scalpel, but a laser scalpel with robot precision. I haven't processed a target where being off by just .1 and at some times .01 would produce dramatically different results ranging from ok to garbage.
I tried cropping out the really bright/large stars, but it left the image feeling too zoomed in, star bloat, and fuzzy. Maybe it would have been better to capture on a mountainside with less air mass to shoot through I decided to leave the brilliant stars in not only as anchor points of interest, but to give color perspective.

ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
IOptron CEM

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6249837
PixInsight job	8H6AEAM60O7I2BHOC17U6EVBZRGFCJGP
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	01h42m17s.482
RA (top/left)	01h43m53s.710
RA (top/right)	01h40m49s.580
RA (bottom/right)	01h40m42s.300
RA (bottom/left)	01h43m44s.901

Dec (center)	+51°34′16″.55
Dec (top/left)	+51°42′45″.98
Dec (top/right)	+51°44′41″.20
Dec (bottom/right)	+51°25′41″.13
Dec (bottom/left)	+51°23′47″.26

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M76 - Little Dumbbell Nebula

M76 - Little Dumbbell Nebula

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M76 - Little Dumbbell Nebula

M76 - Little Dumbbell Nebula

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