The Dumbbell Nebula M27

For the first time since May I have been able to go out and observe with my Dwarf 3. The night before last (the 8th July) the sky was pretty clear after a hot day and the moon was one day past last quarter. The summer triangle is now obviously prominent in the south east and one object I haven't photographed for a while that appears in the midst of this triangle of bright stars is the Dumbbell Nebula M27 in the constellation of Vulpecula. We are still in a period when astronomical twilight lasts all night but it seemed to me that the sky was dark enough to make observing worthwhile (I could, for example, see parts of the Milky Way).

Here is the result of 198x15s (49.5 minutes) of observation:-

The first frame was taken at 23:49 BST and the last at 00:57 on the 9th. The astro filter was employed and the gain was set to 60. Auto parameters were used in Stellar Studio. I have increased the saturation of the image in Photoshop and binned it x2 (please click on the image to see a full-size view). Here is a close up of the object using the unbinned data:-

The beautiful colours of this object have been picked up well in this image. Notice also the density of stars in the background. This is because the object is close to the Milky Way. This object is a fine example of a planetary nebula and is the result of an old star (a red giant) shedding its outer layers of dust and gas. This is what we can see in the form of a shell of material which surrounds the remnant of the original star (now a white dwarf). The red colours some from hot ionized hydrogen (the H-alpha Balmer line) and the blue colours from doubly ionized oxygen. The nebula is about 1360 light-years away and is approximately 2 light-years in diameter. Its age is estimated to be 9,800 years.