I'm finally getting around to editing and posting some of my images from early June. I got out on both the night of June 7, and the night of June 8th. On the first night I managed to image Messier 57, also known as the Ring Nebula. I know that I seem to image and post this nebula every year, but I can't help myself. It is such a great object to image, and there's always something new I discover when editing images of this object.
M57 is a planetary nebula, which is a bit misleading because it has nothing to do with a planet, and everything to do with an exploding star. The nebula is the glowing remains of a sun-like star, and the tiny dot in the middle of the nebula is the stars hot core, known as a white dwarf, which is all that remains after the red giant star that it previously was exploded 6,000-8,000 years ago. Nicely placed between the stars Sulafat and Sheliak in the constellation Lyra, and the nebula is approximately 2,000 light years away from earth with a magnitude of 8.8. This object is best viewed in the summer months. M57 has a radius of approximate 1.3 light years, and is expanding around 1 arc second per century, or 20-30 km/s.
This image consists of 100 images at 60 seconds each for a total of 1 hour and 40 minutes of light collection. Stacked along with 50 dark frames, 40 flat frames, and 100 bias frames. All preprocessing and post processing done in PixInsight.
Gear:
Celestron 8" SCT
CG5 Advanced Series Go-To
Orion Starshoot Autoguider
PHD Autoguiding Software
Stock Canon T3i
M57 is a planetary nebula, which is a bit misleading because it has nothing to do with a planet, and everything to do with an exploding star. The nebula is the glowing remains of a sun-like star, and the tiny dot in the middle of the nebula is the stars hot core, known as a white dwarf, which is all that remains after the red giant star that it previously was exploded 6,000-8,000 years ago. Nicely placed between the stars Sulafat and Sheliak in the constellation Lyra, and the nebula is approximately 2,000 light years away from earth with a magnitude of 8.8. This object is best viewed in the summer months. M57 has a radius of approximate 1.3 light years, and is expanding around 1 arc second per century, or 20-30 km/s.
This image consists of 100 images at 60 seconds each for a total of 1 hour and 40 minutes of light collection. Stacked along with 50 dark frames, 40 flat frames, and 100 bias frames. All preprocessing and post processing done in PixInsight.
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| M57 June 07, 2019 |
Celestron 8" SCT
CG5 Advanced Series Go-To
Orion Starshoot Autoguider
PHD Autoguiding Software
Stock Canon T3i
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