M27 is a planetary nebula, the cast-off shell of a dying star, which can still be seen at the center of the nebula. Also called the Dumbbell Nebula, M27 is about 1400 light years from Earth in the constellation Vulpecula.

There are about 3000 planetary nebulae known to exist in our galaxy, but most of them are very distant, appearing quite small and faint to Earthly observers. M27 was the first planetary nebula to be discovered, and is the second largest in apparent size, and the second closest planetary nebula to Earth.

This image was composed from 55 forty-five second frames acquired on the night of 25-July-2019 from my backyard. The camera used was a ZWO ASI071MC Pro, attached to a Celestron 8" Rowe Ackerman Schmidt Astrograph. This telescope has a focal ratio of f/2 and a focal length of 400 millimeters.

The frames were acquired using Sequence Generator Pro, and processed along with dark frames, bias frames and flat field frames using PixInsight.