Sunrise over M76
M76, which is also known as the the Little Dumbbell, Cork or Butterfly Nebula is a planetary nebula about 4.5 light years across and approx 4000 light years distant. It was formed about 10,000 years ago when the central dying star lost a huge amount of matter. The structure of the nebula has two inner lobes and two fainter outer ones. High Ha emissions are present along with OIII emissions which create a the teal (blue/green) cast.
As for the title, the bright star reminded me of Sunrise on Earth, hence the name.
(For the more literal among you, the bright star is HD10498 which has apparent magnitude of 6.6, so you'd probably be unable to see this with the naked eye. It's about 27x the size of our Sun and is approx 900 light years distant).
The LRGB image below represents over 15 hours integration time and was taken with my Esprit 150.
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