Messier 57, the Ring Nebula
by Vern on May.29, 2007, under Astronomy, Deep sky, Planetary Nebula
Messier 57, the Ring Nebula, is fairly high up in the sky around midnight in late May. It is one of the summer objects that nearly everyone takes a look at if they have a scope and a clear sky. M57 is beautiful to look at and is also one of our best examples of a planetary nebula. The star in the center has expelled envelopes of gas and dust and has collapsed to a white dwarf. Intense radiation causes gases surrounding the star to ionize and glow. The ionized oxygen glows a greenish color and the ionized hydrogen a redish color.
The image above was taken early Sunday morning May 27, 2007, with a Celestron Nexstar11 telescope, a F6.3 focal reducer, and a Canon Xti camera. Camera was set to ISO 800 and a 25 second exposure. Registax4 was used to align and stack 16 images. Sky was mostly clear, temperature 58° F, turbulence between 5 and 6/10, and no wind. Transparency was quite good although the humidity was high and dew was on about everything. Location was Louisville, CO.
Here is above M57 in desktop wallpaper or screen saver size (1280×1024). Send me a note if you would like another size.
May 29th, 2007 on 11:05 am
[...] finally, here’s a nice picture of the M57, the Ring Nebula, one of my favourite telescope targets. Thanks to Vern’s [...]
May 29th, 2007 on 3:39 pm
WOW!.I am absolutely stunned.Perhaps one of the most beautiful I have ever seen!!.Good job!
May 29th, 2007 on 4:28 pm
I was surprised that a 25 second exposure would bring out much detail at all. Not surprisingly, the outer shell is missing and the nearby galaxy IC 1296 doesn’t show either. See Brian Kimball’s deep M57 shot. This was mostly experiment to see how deep I could get in 30 seconds or less with the Canon Xti and Nexstar11 at f6.3. Apparently the answer is around mag 15. That is nice since no guiding is needed. The mounts PEC errors can be mostly removed by deleting a few frames. I may have to a few more…
May 29th, 2007 on 5:45 pm
I’m looking forward to seeing them!