Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  M 97  ·  NGC 3587  ·  Owl Nebula  ·  PK148+57.1
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The Owl Nebula, Rick Veregin
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The Owl Nebula

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The Owl Nebula, Rick Veregin
Powered byPixInsight

The Owl Nebula

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

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Description

The Owl Nebula is one of the faintest object in Messier's catalog, one of only four planetary nebula. It shows the "gentle" death of stars like our own sun, unable to sustain fusion any more, they puff up and blow off about half their mass over thousands of years, the other half collapsing into a white dwarf. In The Owl there are two jets of material ejected nearly aligned with our line of sight: these are the two dark eyes of The Owl, as the dust in the jets absorbs light. The darker eye is the jet coming towards us, while the brighter eye is the jet moving away from us.

With short exposures and 3x drizzle in DSS, I found a lot of fine detail in the core, which I have not found in many images of The Owl. To me the detail seems real, so I left it in. If anyone has a suggestion on a high resolution image to confirm the fine details please let me know. I did not see it on the HLA.

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