M97 - The Owl Nebula

nebulae

M97, The Owl Nebula, is a planetary nebula in Ursa Major. At a distance of 2,500 light years, it’s roughly 1 light year wide and expanding at roughly 20 miles per second.

This image was taken as a test image between two different targets, comprised of 10 180s exposures with a Canon T4i and 11” Edge SCT at f/10. (I’ll often take a series of test images to examine later in order to decide on exposure length and framing for subsequent evenings.) Typically, images need substantially longer exposure time, but the conditions were right for a fairly usable image as-is.

Resolution ........ 0.317 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 136.103 deg
Focal ............. 2927.18 mm
Pixel size ........ 4.50 um
Field of view ..... 19' 33.9" x 12' 58.1"
Image center ...... RA: 11 14 39.596  Dec: +55 01 30.26