Dumbbell Nebula ... Messier 27
Also known as the Apple Core Nebula and NGC 6853, the Dumbbell Nebula is about 1360 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula. This is a planetary nebula ... but has nothing to do with a planet. To early astronomers who had very small, poor quality telescopes their faint, round appearance resembled distant planets such as Neptune and Uranus. And the name has stuck. What they are though are really glowing shells of gas ejected by dying stars. The central star here ... which is difficult to see ... is a white dwarf.
This is 543 ten second images taken with a Seestar S50 scope stacked and further processed in PixInsight ... enhanced with the NIK Collection Plugin for Photoshop ... and a few star spikes added with ProDigital Software's StarSpikes Pro 4.
Dumbbell Nebula ... Messier 27
Also known as the Apple Core Nebula and NGC 6853, the Dumbbell Nebula is about 1360 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula. This is a planetary nebula ... but has nothing to do with a planet. To early astronomers who had very small, poor quality telescopes their faint, round appearance resembled distant planets such as Neptune and Uranus. And the name has stuck. What they are though are really glowing shells of gas ejected by dying stars. The central star here ... which is difficult to see ... is a white dwarf.
This is 543 ten second images taken with a Seestar S50 scope stacked and further processed in PixInsight ... enhanced with the NIK Collection Plugin for Photoshop ... and a few star spikes added with ProDigital Software's StarSpikes Pro 4.