M57

This image of M57 reveals its location between the two stars Sulafat and Sheliak in the constellation of Lyra. I captured this immage under hazy sky conditions with stars only visible down to magnitude 3. The telescope I was using was an 80mm refractor at f/6.3 mounted on a Vixen Atlux mount. PHD autoguiding was used and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera was used with narrowband filters; SII, OIII, and H-alpha. Total exposure times were 40 minutes for each filter. I captured 5 minute sub-frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat-fields to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image.

Click on an image to get a closer view.

M57