Thursday, October 23, 2014

The Dumbbell Nebula 10.22.2014

Like the Ring Nebula, the Dumbbell nebula is a planetary nebula marking the end of a star's life as it puffs off its outer layers into space.  The central star of the nebula is the largest known white dwarf. The shape of the nebula is an oblate spheroid and we are looking at the plane of its equator. The rate of expansion is around 17 km per second. This image is a stack of 20 15-second exposures with the ASI 120MM camera.




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