M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, has made regular appearances on this blog. It’s a large “planetary nebula” blown off from the surface of a dead star, which now lies as a white dwarf at its centre.

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/planetary-nebula

White dwarf’s themselves are fascinating objects. They have a mass similar to our sun, but compacted down to something the size of planet earth. They no longer generate energy and are in the process of cooling down. Eventually, they will become black dwarfs: dense, burnt out cinders. But since the time taken for a white dwarf to cool is calculated to be longer than the current age of the universe, no black dwarfs are currently expected to exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf

My previous best effort for the dumbell was limited by the use of a manual telescope and camera. The colours here are false.

The other night, for the first time, I pointed the smart telescope at it. I took two, 5 minute, stacked exposures. One with the telescope’s light pollution filter (which makes the nebula brighter) and one with it’s infra-red and ultraviolet filter (which shows more stars). The result is a combination of the two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbbell_Nebula

At about 1,000 light years distance, The Dumbbell Nebula is on our cosmic doorstep. This was a rather pretty distraction from the real effort this week though. That was Markarian’s Chain, a long string of galaxies about 50 million light years away. They’re named after the Armenian astronomer Benjamin Markarian, who demonstrated that they were all part of the same group, moving through space together.

This is too large an object to fit in most telescope and camera combinations. It takes multiple images, patched together as a mosaic to build the whole picture. Fortunately, the smart telescope knows exactly how to do this. The following image took it four hours to assemble fully. This took several attempts, but I’m fairly happy with the result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markarian%27s_Chain

I really recommend the full size version of this, seen on a big screen rather than a phone.

https://mega.nz/file/B9oxySBJ#bRNB8hOzvV-D8jSefOKfzTDKx-UQukrSghr6jZ1gxyc

I’m hoping to do even better some time soon. I’ve been experimenting with putting the smart scope on an “equatorial mount”. This allows it to track the apparent rotation of the sky by having a fixed axis that points at the north celestial pole. Initial efforts look good, but I need some clear, moon free, nights to really try it out properly. This would remove a lot of the rotation artifacts present in the above picture.