Messier 108 and Messier 97 – 3 Feb. 2024

The Messier 108 galaxy and the Messier 97, “Owl” planetary nebula form a wonderful pair in the Northern sky, here imaged with our astrograph.

Messier 108 and Messier 97. 3 Feb. 2024.

The image above comes from the average of 30, 120-second unfiltered exposures, taken with the ARTEC250+Paramount ME+C3Pro61000EC robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy.

The large field of view of the telescope used made possible to beautifully frame both those deep-sky gems.

Messier 97, better known as the “Owl” nebula, is a famous planetary nebula, discovered by Pierre Méchain on February 16, 1781 and later added by Charles Messier to his famous catalogue. Its distance is estimated between 2000 and 2800 light years.

Messier 108 is an edge-on barred spiral galaxy, showing a very interesting pattern of dusty structures, again discovered by Méchain. It is an isolated member of the Ursa Major Cluster, about 30 million light years from Earth. In 2023 it hosted supernova SN 2023dbc, with a total of three similar events since 1969.

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