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Description
Finally, after many, many attempts the Ring Nebula (Messier 57) has been added to my little collection. Seems like I've always had trouble getting this one - bad seeing, poor collimation, terrible focus. All these have made imaging this nebula a challenge for me, but now I have it.

On to more matters. The Ring Nebula is the remains of a star, similar to our own perhaps, that has reached the end of its life. Shedding its outer layers and blasting the material into space, the star collapses into a white dwarf. Through a telescope, the object appears as a hazy smoke-ring. The nebula lies at a distance of only 2.3 kly in the direction of the constellation of Lyra (the Lyre or Harp).

~~~

Upon further investigation, I found the 15th magnitude galaxy IC 1296. I almost missed this little gem - thought my screen had a smudge on it. However, after stretching the image, it brightened considerably. The galaxy can just be seen to the left and below the Ring Nebula (See if you can spot it as well). The galaxy of course is much farther away than the ring nebula (~221 million light years), and is a barred spiral galaxy.

And here is the galaxy after I stretched the image values.
[link]

~~~

Enjoy!

=======

Luminance: 70 x 30 second images
Red: 70 x 30 second images
Green: 70 x 30 second images
Blue: 70 x 30 second images

Reduction done with MaxIm DL
Bias, Structure Bias, Dark

Description
Finally, after many, many attempts the Ring Nebula (Messier 57) has been added to my little collection. Seems like I've always had trouble getting this one - bad seeing, poor collimation, terrible focus. All these have made imaging this nebula a challenge for me, but now I have it.

On to more matters. The Ring Nebula is the remains of a star, similar to our own perhaps, that has reached the end of its life. Shedding its outer layers and blasting the material into space, the star collapses into a white dwarf. Through a telescope, the object appears as a hazy smoke-ring. The nebula lies at a distance of only 2.3 kly in the direction of the constellation of Lyra (the Lyre or Harp).

~~~

Upon further investigation, I found the 15th magnitude galaxy IC 1296. I almost missed this little gem - thought my screen had a smudge on it. However, after stretching the image, it brightened considerably. The galaxy can just be seen to the left and below the Ring Nebula (See if you can spot it as well). The galaxy of course is much farther away than the ring nebula (~221 million light years), and is a barred spiral galaxy.

And here is the galaxy after I stretched the image values.
[link]

~~~

Enjoy!

=======

Luminance: 70 x 30 second images
Red: 70 x 30 second images
Green: 70 x 30 second images
Blue: 70 x 30 second images

Reduction done with MaxIm DL
Bias, Structure Bias, Dark