Image 1: Dumbbell Nebula (M27), Imaged 2023-09-15 at Lac Teeples (As below, cropped)
Image 2: Dumbbell Nebula (M27), Imaged 2023-09-15 at Lac Teeples
The autumn is upon us and with that there is more opportunity to do Astronomy. Recently the full moons have been near the beginning of the month so the new moon (ideal for faint targets) is mid-month.
The dumbbell nebula is a very popular target, bright enough to see with a small telescope, with very attractive colours. I’ve imaged it a few times in the past but didn’t have an image that I was really satisfied with. It is 8 minutes of arc by 5.6 minutes of arc meaning it is fairly small and therefore there is a tendency for the nearby stars to appear bloated (simply because we crop so much). This image is quite sharp.
The skies were clear on the night of September 15-16 and I was interested in a few targets, mainly Jupiter (no good so far). I am also thinking about having a “Zoom Astronomy” night and fooled around with that. The Dumbbell was one of the targets I thought would be good for zoom astronomy. It was, and I decided to collect more data for an image.
The dumbbell nebula (#27 in Messier’s list) is the remnants of an exploded star. At the end of its life a star of a certain size will explode and a shell of brightly lit up mass will be produced, such as this nebula. It is relatively close to us in the Milky Way galaxy, 1360 light years away, and they calculate that it exploded roughly 10, 000 years ago.
This image was captured at Lac Teeples using the RASA11 telescope and a ZWO Duo-Band filter. The ZWO ASI-6200MC colour camera was used. Just over an hour of 64 second sub frames were used.
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