Butterfly Nebula M76 in Ha+O3

[johnh]

EQ6, SPX350 F4.53, ATK-16HR, TS9mmOAG and Mintron guidecam. Astrodon Ha5nm, O3-3nm.

This nebula is suprisingly large (4.7x2.5') and does look like a butterfly. It is 3,500lyrs away (with estimates upto 8,000lyrs) and has the strangest bipolar structure owing to complex velocity dymanics and a possible double toroid structure with rotation involved. Its magnitude is classified as 12.2 but many say it appears visually brighter at mag 10.1? This was taken in December using a new NB synthetic colour technique with a Ha/O3-green instead of Ha/O3 for blue, the green was Ha33%+O3-67%. This gave very realistic colour for stars than the brief RGB I collected and it gave the nebula a red/blue combination that was more pleasing than red/green.

Ha5nm-90min in 10min subs.

O3 3nm-150min in 15min subs.

R(Ha)-G(O3 67%+Ha33%)-B(O3). The O3 and Ha were stretched and processed fully before combining as sRGB.

Thanks, JohnH.

[MartinB]

Crikey you've pulled out a mass off faint outer OIII. The colour blending has worked very nicely. The big newt has done a superb job, it's an amazing pic

[barkis]

Mmmm! Exciting stuff here. There's a pair of faint ears protruding from top right, and assuming a head. No doubt the faint stuff Martin referred to. A great Image this John.

Ron.

[RobH]

Excellent image John. Having had a few attempts at this and got nowhere, I fully appreciate how good this is

I've never seen the faint OIII outer lobes before, and the detail in the core region is superb.

Cheers

Rob

[roundycat]

Beautiful job. Better than some of my real butterfly pics and they were only 6" away.

Dennis

[Tim]

Very nice John. It's a tricky little beggar this one, like Rob I have had a couple of goes at it, and never been really happy with the result, the bright central core is in stark contrast to those very faint outer shells, and you have made the most of them.

[steppenwolf]

Lovely to see a Newtonian capturing this sort of image - excellent and exciting image!

[R Fisher]

excellent image, very intersting