Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  M 97  ·  NGC 3587  ·  Owl Nebula
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M97 Owl Nebula, Matthias
M97 Owl Nebula
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M97 Owl Nebula

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M97 Owl Nebula, Matthias
M97 Owl Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

M97 Owl Nebula

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Description

The Owl Nebula (aka M97 & NGC 3587) is a planetary nebula that is over 2000 ly away from earth. Its age is estimated to be about 8000 years and it has reached a diameter of 1.8 ly by now while still expanding 27–39 km/s.
With my 11" SCT It is also a nice object to observe visually and it is possible to see its white dwarf in the center.

The Owl Nebula was one of my first b/w astrophotography targets almost 2 years ago. At that time I only had the AltAz mount and no filter wheel. I don't have guiding yet but now I do have a GEM which already allows for longer exposure times (up to 60s if I'm lucky).

The OIII filter subs revealed a faint halo ring around M97 that I wasn't aware of it had until now. To visualize it better I lifted it a bit more than the rest of the OIII.

The SHO subs are mixed using the Foraxx method. I still struggle getting reasonable RGB star colors calculated from Ha&OIII. Some of them usually turn out deep red which I then have to reduce.

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