This is an image of the Owl Nebula, M97. It’s a “planetary” nebula – a nebula created by a star that has exhausted its supply of pure hydrogen and that has now turned to complex nuclear fusion reactions that create the heavier elements like oxygen and carbon. From a purely aesthetic perspective, I find planetaries to be among the most beautiful celestial structures.
Here, the Owl Nebula is captured in the lower right hand of the frame. In the upper left hand corner is galaxy M108 of the Ursa Major (Big Dipper) galaxy group. It is sometimes called the “surfboard galaxy” because of its shape in the perspective that we see it – on edge, as it were.
This image is the composite of 102, 6-minute exposures that I was fortunate to capture over the month of March 2022. The astrograph I used was the 130mm Stellarvue sextuplet in our backyard. The camera is a full-frame Cannon 6D, and the image was captured through a “Triad” quad-band filter.
