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M27 (NGC 6853), The DumBbell Nebula, in Vulpecula
The planetary nebula M27 is another one of those traditional objects for practicing one's astrophotography techniques. It's relatively large for a planetary (8'x5') and bright. Burnham places it at roughly 900 lightyears away, more recent data indicate a distance of 1250 ly. It will be interesting to photograph this again with a longer focal length. This stacked image, at 1560 mm focal length, had to be considerably enlarged. The grain is visible and some distortion remains obvious even after cropping. A much superior CCD image can be seen here.
| Date | 8 September 2000 |
| Scope | Astro-Physics 130 at f12 on G-11 mount; ST-4 guiding |
| Exposure | Unhypered Supra 400, 2 shots @30 min, no filters |
| Processing | Stacked in RegiStar, stretched in PhotoShop |