These are two color images of M27 the Dumbbell Nebula. The first was taken Thursday August 20th over a 3 hour period with my 10″ SCT and is made up of LRGB images shot at 5 minutes per image at -10 degrees centigrade. There were between 3 and 5 images taken per color and it was combined with Nebulosity 4 and Photoshop CS 2015. I have taken this before in monochrome and in color (2nd picture in 2005) on my old camera, and I can see that the color separation filters that I’m using now is giving much closer color to the greenish blue color that should be in the center. The image has come a long way since my first tries in 2005 with the same telescope.

This object is another exploded star collapsed into a white dwarf which lights up the gas causing the colors.. This is in an extremely dense region of the Milky Way with many older stars. The sky was somewhat hazy last night and the wind picked up making guiding impossible, otherwise I would have combined more images. The dumbell goes form lower left to upper right and the wispy sections at the top and bottom require longer exposures than my guiding would have supported previously. I’m extremely pleased with my new camera, filters, color filter wheel and mount/scope.