Little Dumbbell Nebula (M 76)

clic for a wide view in 70% size 1384 x 924 (292 kB)

 

About this Image

The appearance of the quite faint M76 resembles to some degree that of the Dumbbell Nebula M27. Most probably, the main body (the bar, or cork) is a bright and slightly elliptical ring we see edge-on, from only a few degrees off its equatorial plane. This ring seems to expand at about 42 km/sec.

Along the axis perpendicular to this plane, the gas expands significantly more rapidly to form the lower surface brightness "wings" of the butterfly. This nebula is surrounded by a faint bipolar halo covering a region of 290 arc seconds in diameter; this material was probably ejected in the form of stellar winds from the central star when it was still in the Red Giant phase of evolution.

Today the central star is of mag 16.6 and a high temperature of some 60,000 K, which will probably cool down as a white dwarf over the coming tens of billions of years. The nice colorsare emitted both in blue-green (O-III) and in red color (H-alpha).
North is to the right.

 


Technical Details
Optics

16" cassegrain in secondary focus at f/10

Mount MK-100 GEM
Camera SBIG STL-11000M at -30C, internal filter wheel
Filters Astronomik Ha + RGB
Date Dec 07, 2005.
Location Wildon/Austria
Sky Conditions mag 5 sky, seeing unstable, temperature 0 C,
Exposure Ha = 60 minutes (30 minute sub-exposures),
R:G:B = 60:50:60 min (10 minute sub-exposures), all binned 2x2.
Processing Image aquisition, registration and color combine in Maxim;
synthetic luminance from RGB, H-alpha blended into red channel, curves, unsharp mask, color balance in Photoshop; Noise reduction by Neatimage for dark areas;