Messier 76: the intriguing “small Dumbbell” planetary nebula: an image – 29 Dec. 2024.
We managed to image the wonderful, though neglected Messier 76 planetary nebula, aka the “little Dumbbell” (NGC 650/651). We are pleased to show it below.
Messier 76 (NGC 650/651): 29 Dec. 2024.
The image above comes from the average of 11, 300-second exposures, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″ + Paramount MEII + SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project. .
Messier 76 (NGC 650/651) was discovered by Pierre Mechain in 1780, then included by Charles Messier in his famous catalogue of “comet-like” objects. It is worth noting it is one of the faintest objects of that catalogue and one of the only four planetary nebulae (a bipolar one) in it.
Lord Rosse suspected it had a spiral shape, but in 1866 its spectrum was found to be consistent with a gaseous structure. It was Herber Curtis the first to classify it as a planetary nebula in 1918, even if 30 years earlier Isaac Roberts suggested it could resemble the Ring Nebula (Messier 57).
It is nicknamed the “little Dumbbell”, once compared with the much brighter and known Messier 27, the “Dumbbell”.
With a distance estimated in about 2500 light years, its linear size is around 1.2 light years.
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