The Dumbell Nebula M27 In All It's Glory; As Seen Through Clear New Jersey Skies

 

This image of the planetary nebula M27 (a.k.a. the Dumbell Nebula) taken by Ron Gattie,is about 1360 light years from Earth and at apparent magnitude +7.5 isn't quite bright enough to see by eye ~ even in the darkest skies. 

But the C14 scope at St. Joseph High School shows not problem getting these rich colors even in a Bortle 6 sky. At that distance, the Dumbell appears to be 3 light-years in diameter, or just a light-year short of the distance between Earth and our nearest star Proxima Centauri.

Nice shot Ron.

Keith

Al Ernst's image of NGC 1491, located in Perseus

NGC-1491 is a faint emission nebula approximately 11,000 ly from Earth. This image was taken in late November from Al's Bridgewater, NJ observatory, using a C-14/f7.7 telescope, a QSI-583 camera and narrowband Ha and Oiii filters, with one hour of 5-minute subs in each band.  Processing was in Nebulosity and Photoshop.

Thanks for the submission Al,

Keith