Looking at the deep sky: Dumbbell nebulae
This is image of Dumbbell nebula taken by me. This is planetary nebula and it is located 1360 light years away from the Earth. Just to make sure you understand how far this is- 12866318600000000 kilometers.
Planetary nebulae are actually consisted of shell of ionized gasses, rejected by the red giant, the dying star. Central star used to be red giant, which is the last stadium of stellar life. After explosion, red giant ejected its atmosphere and gasses, and the remnant inside nebulae is just white dwarf, which is actually stellar corpse. In center of Dumbbell nebulais the biggest known white dwarf to date.
Red color is artificial, added by me.
Image is not of desired quality because observation was performed under heavy influence of moonlight.
I used 60cm Cassegrain telescope, located at the Mt. Vidojevica. at the elevation of 1100 meters.
Astronomical observatory, located at Mt. Vidojevica.
Stunning! Thx for this awesome photo. Many people post photos made on earth - and they are good, no question. But to see photos of the universe, stars, well thats quite cool. I hope, elon Musk gets fast enough to Mars, so we can build telescopes there for new type of galaxy photos ;) Keep on!
Reminded me of the Judica-Cordiglia brothers
So how old is what we see on the photo, laniakea?
Image itself is couple of months old, but age of nebula is approximately 10 000 years.