Dumbbell nebula is a planetary nebula located 1360 light-years from solar system in constellation Vulpecula (fox or little fox). Dumbbell was the first discovered planetary nebula by Charles Messier. It’s very popular deep space object for amateur astrophotographers, including me.
Actually, this is my second attempt of this planetary nebula. This time I concentrated on bi-color image composed of hydrogen alpha (Hα) and oxygen (OIII). This is because of the fact that the planetary nebulae contain these two gases. Hα was inserted into red channel and OIII into blue and green channel. Post processing was done in PixInsight software.
| Telescope: | Newton 254/1000 mm |
| Aperture: | 254 mm |
| Focal length: | 1000 mm |
| Mount | Skywatcher EQ-6 |
| Autoguiding | Orion Mini Autoguider |
| Camera: | Moravian instruments G2 8300M @-30C |
| Corrector: | Baader MPCC |
| Filters: | Baader H-alpha 7 nm, OIII 8 nm |
| Exposure: | 10xH-alpha, 11x OIII, 600s, 3.5 hours in total |