Through the telescope

Here’s my best picture yet of M97, the owl nebula that doesn’t look like an owl. It looks smoother than most of the pictures on this blog because it is linear, i.e. I haven’t messed around with the brightness scale to enhance the secret, dark, hidden objects. The view of this beautiful green planetary nebula is much more than you will see through the telescope; the three stars at the centre are very difficult to see visually. In order to gauge the brightness, the stars to the left and right of the nebula are 12th and 14th magnitude, and the 15th mag star just below has a 16th mag galaxy hiding behind it! I also picked up the edge-on sliver of a galaxy to the left. A faint patch of red can be seen on the edge in the direction of this galaxy. This is a lovely big planetary, glowing mostly in light from the bizarre space form of oxygen: O₂+ ions. For those of you with an interest in chemistry, this is a state that does not exist in detectable levels on earth. The shape looks like two overlapping circles offset diagonally a little way. This is possibly just a near top down view of the two symmetrical lobes that were ejected from the dying star thousands of years ago. Image was 6 x 90 seconds at f/3 on the 20” telescope.