This is the Dumb-Bell nebula known to astronomers as Messier 27. Not visible to the naked eye, it was first discovered by Charles Messier on July 12, 1764, anticipating my viewing by some 236 years and a whole gob of technology that has appeared since then. His equipment was a simple refracting telescope. Mine was a remotely manipulated 10″ Schmidt Cassegrain f/10 with a focal length of 2500 mm that I have never laid eyes or hands on, equipped with a megapixel digital camera. I can only imagine the many hours of viewing and note-taking that preceded his submitting his discovery to the Royal Astronomical Society.

Why is it that I feel like I am cheating?

So what is it that we are looking at here? Rather than being located far out in deep space, like the Whirlpool Galaxy, this is a planetary nebula, a mere 1,250 light-years away, just a hop, skip, and jump in astronomical terms. Unrelated to the planets of the solar system, these nebulae are a short-lived phenomena, lasting a few tens of thousands of years, compared to a typical star’s lifetime of several billion years. Here is what my astronomy text, The Cosmos says about planetary nebulae.

As the star grows still larger during the second red-giant phase, the loosely bound outer layers can continue to drift outward until they leave the star. Perhaps the outer layers escape as a shell of gas, in a relatively gentle ejection that we can think of as a “cosmic burp.” Or perhaps they drift off gradually (in the form of a “wind”), and a second round of gas sometimes comes off at a more rapid pace. This second round of gas plows into the first round, creating a visible shell.

…In any case, we know of about a thousand such glowing shells of gas in our Milky Way Galaxy. Each shell contains roughly 20% of our sun’s mass. They are exceptionally beautiful. In the small telescopes of a hundred years ago, though, they appeared as faint greenish objects, similar to the planet Uranus. These objects were thus named planetary nebulae.

But, you say, this image looks purple, rather than greenish. There’s a story behind that. I signed up for an hour of telescope time to image Mr. Dumb-Bell. After my usual fumble-fingered round of getting my first image, I made two more images through the blue and red camera filters. Unfortunately, I did not have time left for my green image. Red and blue tends to come out purple, and so … .

Dave, which he always was partial to purple, anyway.