The Dumbbell Nebula (M27, NGC 6853) lies in the small constellation of Vulpecula, about 1,400 light years away. Charles Messier found it in 1764 and it was the first planetary nebula ever observed — a misleading name, since planets have nothing to do with it. It is what remains of a star of roughly the Sun's mass which, having run out of fuel, expelled its own outer layers.
At the centre sits a white-hot dwarf, no bigger than the Earth but with the mass of a star: its ultraviolet radiation makes the surrounding gas glow. The blue-green comes from ionised oxygen, the red from hydrogen, and the twin-lobed shape — the "dumbbell" — is the shell seen edge-on.
The gas has been expanding for some 10,000 years and will keep thinning until it fades from view: on a cosmic scale, a planetary nebula lasts the blink of an eye. The second frame is a tighter crop on the reddish filaments reaching beyond the main lobes.
← Back to the gallery