Color picture taken August 2020 – M27, The Dumbbell Nebula. I have taken this image several times before as one of my favorite objects (exactly a year ago with my 12″ telescope) and I decided to repeat it with my newer 102 mm refractor. This image shows more detail than last years version and a larger area of the surrounding stars with many more faint stars since I took much longer images. The night was beautiful and stable, and the refractor has the sharpest and stable focus of any of my telescopes. There were 28 images shot in 4 colors at 5 minutes exposure for each image. It was a total of 2 hours and 20 minutes of integration time.

This is 1300 light years away and is a gaseous remnant of a star similar to our sun that is at the end of its life. There is a white dwarf at the center that illuminates the exploded gas.