M27 (also known as Dumbbell Nebula) is a planetary nebula in constellation Vulpecula with an apparent diameter of about 16' (arcminutes).
The nebulae lies at a distance of about 1300 ly from Earth (distance of the central star according to Gaia DR3).
Click on the image to load a wider version using a JavaScript viewer.
This pseudo color image is composed from H-alpha light (shown dark red to yellow) and [OIII] light (shown dark blue to cyan). This picture visualizes the faint outer structures which reveal that the true size
is about 16'. Most sources state state only 7' to 8' which is the diameter of the bright inner structure (mostly cyan and yellow in image above).
This image is a false color composite where [OIII] is mapped to red, H-alpha is mapped to green and [SII] is mapped to blue. Stars are partially subtracted using continuum images.
Here [SII] is mapped to red, H-alpha is mapped to green and [OIII] is mapped to blue. This view makes the very faint sulfur structures (yellow to red) better visible than the image above. Due to the bad SNR of this channel, the image only emphasizes the bright inner structure which
has a diameter of about 7'.
Image data
FOV:
0.31° × 0.31°
Date:
2020-2021
Location:
Pulsnitz, Germany
Instrument:
400mm Newton at f=1520mm
Camera Sensor:
Panasonic MN34230
Orientation:
North is up (approximately)
Scale:
0.8 arcsec/pixel (at full resolution)
Total exposure times:
H-alpha (3nm):
10.0 h
[OIII] (3nm):
8.8 h
[SII] (3nm):
16.2 h
NIR:
0.7 h
Blue:
0.7 h
Image processing
All image processing steps are deterministic, i.e. there was no manual retouching or any other kind of non-reproducible adjustment. The software which was used can be downloaded here.
Image processing steps where:
Bias correction, photon counting
Dark current subtraction, flatfield correction, noise estimation
Alignment and brightness calibration using stars from reference image
Stacking with masking unlikely values and background correction
Extracting stars from the emission line images using information from continuum images
Denoising and deconvolution both components (stars and residual)
RGB-composition
Dynamic range compression using non-linear high-pass filter
Tonal curve correction
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