Saturn Nebula

Saturn Nebula

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Description

The Saturn Nebula is a very bright Planetary Nebula in Aquarius near M72. It is 36" and incredibly bright at mag. 8. SEDS indicates that it was discovered by William Herschel in 1872. It distance estimates range from 2900 to 3900 l.y. It has an extended halo of 100" according to the Sky Catalog 2000.0. This halo is very faint, but can barely be seen in the OIII image. The nebula itself in this image is made from only the OIII and H-a (6 nm FWHM) narrowband filters with significant deconvolution. The stars were taken with RGB filters and added in. A zzomed image is presented below:

Image Date: 09/07/2007
Details: Exposure Time: 40 min H-a, OIII and 13 min each R,G,B
Camera: SBIG  STL11000
Telescope: RC Optical  16" f/8.9 Ritchey-Chretien
Mount: Software Bisque  Paramount ME

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