SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
Rod Pommier
Location of Photo:
Pommier Observatory, Portland, OR, USA
Date/Time of photo:
2010-07-04, 08:14 UT.
Equipment:
Telescope/Mount: Celestron Compustar C14. Camera: Canon EOS 20D DSLR, unmodified. Total exposure time = 40 minutes at ISO 800.
Description:
Although M57, the Ring Nebula, in Lyra is one of the most popular deep sky objects, it is very small with an apparent size of only 74 x 62 arc seconds. This makes it a disappointing object to image, as results rarely look like those we are familiar with from major observatories or the Hubble Space Telescope. Even with the very long 3900 mm focal length of the C14, it takes up only a very small area of the imaging chip. However, this greatly zoomed in and cropped region from that image does provide a detailed view of the Ring Nebula that we all hope to capture. It shows the central white dwarf star, fine lobulated structure in the torus, ragged internal edges, and delicate central wisps, along with contrasting colors of teal from OIII and red from H-alpha. M57 is believed to lie 2,283 light-years from Earth, has a diameter of 1.3 light-years, and an age of 7005 years.
