Monday, June 15, 2015

This is what staying up too late gets you.
On the early morning of June 14, 2015, and by early I mean 3 AM early, I finally had a chance to get back under the stars at the Starlight Observatory. This was only about the third time I have been able to do so in the past 6 or 7 months, mostly due to cloud cover, but also some travel and a lot of sleeping. After figuring things out that I have forgotten in the past several months, and finding out several more things by experimentation, I finally produced one, reasonably good photograph.
This is the Dumbbell nebula, also know as M27, and is found in the constellation of Vulpecula, which means "the little fox". It's found in the sky just south of Cygnus, the Swan, aka the Northern Cross.
M27 is called a planetary nebula, a kind of emission nebula consisting of an expanding glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from old red giant stars late in their lives. M27 is about 1300 light years away from us, and about 3 ly in diameter.

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