The Owl Nebula (M97) (the little blue circle) is a planetary nebula located approximately 2000 ly away in constellation Ursa Major. It has already been discovered in 1781 by Pierre Méchain – a French astronomer. The cool thing about it is that there is a spiral galaxy M108 which is “close” to that nebula – at least from our perspective.
 | Date | 2013/06/06 |
 | Location | Böblingen / Germany |
 | Object | Spiral Galaxy M108 & Owl Nebula M97 |
 | Camera | Atik383L+ |
 | Guiding | yes, DMK31AU03.AS via OAG |
 | Telescope | 8" GSO Newtonian |
 | Barlow lens | none |
 | Mount | EQ6Syntrek |
 | Cooling | -15°C |
 | Luminance | 8x, 800s, bin: 1x1 |
 | Red | 7x, 200s, bin: 2x2 |
 | Green | 7x, 200s, bin: 2x2 |
 | Blue | 7x, 200s, bin: 2x2 |
 | Dark | 5x |
 | Flat | - |
 | Total exposure | ~3h56min. |
In a clear night I was able to shoot this image. With 3j56m the total exposure time is relatively long compared to other images. I did not use any flatfield images for the post-processing. Based on that fact I am quite satisfied with the result.
The image is also available in full resolution.
Clear skies!
Last updated: June 20, 2022 at 10:46 am