M27 Dumbbell Nebula (planetary)

M27 Dumbbell Nebula (planetary) is in the constellation Vulpecula, ABOUT 1,300 light years away. A planetary nebula is the remnant of a sun size star in the last phase of it’s life when the atmosphere has been shed and now glows from the energy of the remaining core. The colors are from different types of gasses being energized. The Dumbbell nebula is about 8.0 X 5.6 arcminutes in size (about a quarter of the moon) and a visual magnitude of 7.5

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Dumbbell Nebula
Wide Field

Equipment

Celestron 11 GPS on a wedge, Hyperstar 3 (F2), modified Canon 350D (Rebel XT). Unguided

Image

37, 15 Second exposures at 800 ISO. Imaged on 9/3/2011

Dumbbell Nebula
High Resolution

Equipment

Celestron 11 on a CGEM mount, F7.5 coma corrector/reducer, Atik 460 mono camera, Lodestar X2 autoguider on an Orion off axis guider.

Image

3 Total hours of light. Imaged on Oct 9th & 13th 2015
25 X 2 minute red
29 X 2 minute green
36 X 2 minute blue

Software

Nebulosity for image capture, calibration and stacking and noise reduction. PHD2 for scope guiding. Photoshop for final processing. All images were drizzle stacked with a 2.0 upscale then 2X2 binned after final post processing.

Full size image scale at a distance of 1300 light years

Width: 2593 Pixels = 19.3 arcminutes
Height: 2015 Pixels = 15.0 arcminutes

Object size information (full size image):

Image size, width and height = 7.3 X 5.7 light years
Pixel size = .003 Light years.
Pixel size = 16.5 Billion (1.6E+10) miles.
Pixel size = 26.6 Billion (2.6E+11) kilometers