Gorgeous 3-color amateur CCD image of the Dumbbell Nebula M27. French amateurs Michel Peyro, Jean-Philippe Barrilliot, and Franck Lefevre of the Observatoire Astronomique in southern France obtained this tri-color image with a 600 mm f/3.2 Newtonian telescope and Hisis22 (Kaf 400) CCD camera.

Daniel Jaroschik obtained this nice photograph of the Dumbbell nebula with a 15-inch (375 mm) f/4.6 LOMO OPTIK Newtonian, on August 1, 2000.

To investigate the light emitted in strong spectral lines of particular elements, typical for many of the planetary nebulae, Richard Crisp took this picture of M27 using Lumicon Hydrogen Alpha, Hydrogen Beta and Oxygen III narrowband filters. He also took the image with a Lumicon Deepsky filter which passes a combination of H Alpha (Ha), H Beta (Hb) and O III (O3) lines. Each of the four images was a 300 sec exposure. For post processing, he assigned L=Deepsky, R=Ha, G=O3, B=Hb. Each image was exposed for 300 seconds.The equipment used was a CM1400 OTA mounted on an Astro-Physics AP1200GTO mount, using an SBIG ST7E NABG camera with the clear filter of the CFW8. The image was taken at f/6.3.

Because the Van Slyke Versa Slider he used has a slot for inserting a 48mm filter, he was able to leave the CFW8 attached to the camera and simply insert the narrowband filters manually. After each filter change, the camera was focused again. The VersaSlider makes it very easy to use narrowband filters with a camera that has a color filter wheel attached.

Compare this "True Color" image of M27, also taken by Richard Crisp, (LRGB using standard Red, Green and Blue filters) with the "False Color" image above. The image was taken with an SBIG ST7E NABG camera attached to a Celestron CM1400 telescope mounted atop an Astro-Physics AP1200GTO mount. The exposure times were: L=300 sec, R=600 sec, G= 600 sec and Blue = 960 sec. The operating temperature was -10 deg C. The date of the exposure was 22 Sept, 2001.

CCD image of M27 by the University of Arizona Astronomy Club.

Last Modification: January 18, 2003