The Owl Nebula (M97 or NGC3587) is a starburst planetary nebula about 2300 light years from Earth, in the constellation Ursa Major. It has an estimated age of around 8000 years.
It is approximately spherical and has three shells, the inner of these is barrel shaped, rather than spherical, and is aligned at around 45 degrees to the line of sight, which creates the Owl's two eyes [1].
At 53 degrees north we have long twilight and short nights (around 2.5 hours for this one), so this is probably the last image until late July.
It was taken over four nights, May 18, 27, 28 and 29. The details are:
Red 6x300s, Green 4x300s, Blue 2x300 s and the rest approximately equal numbers H_Alpha and OIII (x300 s). Each channel was calibrated using 40 flats, 40 dark flats and 50 darks.
The RGB was taken on the first night and quite a few were rejected because of clouds. I included them because they greatly improved the stars but had no noticeable affect on the nebula.
CS
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl_Nebula
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