I love planetary nebulae. I keep coming back to this one time and time again as a kind of "measuring stick" in my progress in this hobby.
This is my latest attempt at the Dumbbell Nebula, this time using the ALP-T filter from Antlia. I wasn't sure how it would turn out with the filter, but I decided to give it a shot...mostly because I was too lazy to remove it from my light train.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I obviously need to collimate my scope again, as the stars are a little wonky. To be honest, the Nexstar 8SE OTA is probably not the best choice for DSOs, but if you can get enough data and crop in, the final product is passable on IG, at least.
In processing, I pulled the color of the greenish parts to more blue, as I thought it gave a little nicer contrast against the reddish bits, and really made the "knots" in the center stand out more.
Those knots are pretty interesting in my opinion. While I was reading a post on NASA's Hubble site, I learned that the knots are formed from the interaction of the gasses thrown off by the star as they interact with more dense materials in the surrounding space.
As always, I'm open to thoughts on improvement!
Thanks for stopping by, and Clear Skies!
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