Last night was one of those nights when anyone with any sense was in some air-conditioned space, not outside doing astro photography. So, for those of us without any sense, me and one of my skunk friends, it was time to sweat the small stuff—like stars. Plus, there was that strange scratching sound coming from a nearby house that gave me a chill. Turned out to be a neighbor raking his drive. (Yeah, 10:30, 86 degrees and he’s raking who-knows-what off his drive.)
So, I’m approaching panic mode as I prepare for a couple big astronomy gigs coming up. I have to take advantage of any relatively clear night to experiment and get comfortable with some new gear. Two of last night’s experiments were near failures. I sensed that, so for kicks, before I wrapped things up, I decided to take a quick shot at one of the prettier nebulae out there, M27.
(Here comes the preview promised in the headline.) M27 is a planetary nebula, located 1,200 to 1,300 light years out there—give or take a few million miles. It’s called a “planetary” nebula, however, it has nothing to do with the planets. The name is an artifact of how these things looked to the ancients through their cheap-o low-powered telescopes back in the day—which was around 1700. In astro terms it’s a youngster, 3,000 to 4,000 years old. And the preview part is, it was created when an aging star (like our sun—we have something to look forward to in 5 billion years) ran out of fuel, and blasted off its outer layer into space. The star then collapsed into what’s known as a dense white dwarf. The expanding cloud of expelled gas and dust still glows due to ultraviolet radiation from that central white dwarf. Just look at the intricate knots of gas and dust! Exciting! And this baby is not small. In our galaxy it would cover the distance from the Sun to Pluto (about 3.7 billion miles).
I made this shot with the SeeStar S30 scope in about 25 minutes. In astro photography time that’s less than a blink. In Earth-bound time, it’s about as long as it takes my skunk friend to sniff around me, then cross the road.
Witt’s End 