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| Description: | Called the Dumbbell nebula because of its
visual appearance, this planetary nebula is the brightest in the sky.
The central star is a bright blue dwarf. The outer shell shows up
primarily in Ha filtering with a considerable OIII component. |
| Exposure Data: | 9/4-12/2008. LRGBHaOIII: 18x10m, 4x20m,
4x20m, 4x20m, 9x20m, 23x15m, all 1x1 except OIII binned 2x2. -15°C, 0.5 arc-sec./pixel. 15.75 hours total
exposure. |
| Processing: | Acquired via CCDAutoPilot and CCDSoft or Maxim,
calibrated and combined in CCDStack, final processing in PS CS3. |
| Optical System: | 16” Ritchey-Chretien @ F/9 w/FFC,
Apogee Alta U16M/FW50-7S CCD
camera, AstroDon filters, Paramount
ME, dithered 3 pixels, off-axis guided with SBIG ST-402ME. |
| Comments: | Total exposure was almost 16 hours.
Thanks to Ken Crawford for many processing tips. |