M27: The Dumbbell Nebula

The Dumbbell Nebula - also known as Messier 27 or NGC 6853 - is a typical planetary nebula and is located in the constellation Vulpecula (The Fox). The distance is rather uncertain, but is believed to be around 1200 light-years. It was first described by the French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier who found it in 1764 and included it as no. 27
in his famous list of extended sky objects.

Colour image of the Dumbbell planetary nebula (Messier 27), obtained on September 28, 1998, with FORS at VLT UT1.
In this three-colour composite,a short exposure was first made through a wide-band filtre registering blue light from the nebula. It was then combined with exposures through two interference filtres in the light of double-ionized oxygen atoms and atomic hydrogen. They were colour-coded as "blue", "green" and "red", respectively, and then combined to produce this picture that shows the structure of the nebula in "approximately true" colours.
The Paranal Observatory is located on Cerro Paranal in the
Atacama Desert, northern Chile. Science operation with the first unit telscope (UT1) is scheduled for the first half of 1999. Full operations of all telescopes is expected shortly after the turn of the century.

Technical information: Photo 38a/98 is reproduced from a three-colour composite based on two interference ([OIII] at 501 nm and 6 nm FWHM - 5 min exposure time; H-alpha at 656 nm and 6 nm FWHM - 5 min) and one broadband (Bessell B at 429 nm and 88 nm FWHM; 30 sec) filtre images, obtained on September 28, 1998, during mediocre seeing conditions (0.8 arcsec). The CCD camera has 2048 x 2048 pix, each covering 24 x 24 痠 and the sky fields shown measure 6.8 x 6.8 arcmin and 3.5 x 3.9 arcmin, respectively. North is up; East is left.

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The Dumbbell Nebula - M27
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