Planetary nebula in Vulpecula
Dumbbell Nebula (M27)
The first planetary nebula anybody found, and still the finest. What you are looking at is a star's discarded atmosphere lit from inside by the ember that shed it, which is a preview of what the Sun will eventually do.
It is around ten thousand years old and expanding at about two arcseconds a century, which is fast enough that plates a lifetime apart show it. The ember at the centre is a white dwarf of unusually large size, and it is that star's ultraviolet output — not any light of the gas itself — doing all the work.
- Catalogue
- M27
- Type
- Planetary nebula
- Constellation
- Vulpecula
- Distance
- 1,360 light-years
- Apparent magnitude
- 7.4
- Surface brightness
- 20.2 mag/□″
- Apparent size
- 8′ × 6′
- Right ascension
- 19h 60m
- Declination
- +22.72°
- Found by
- Charles Messier, 1764
Small enough that its 7.4 magnitudes arrive concentrated rather than smeared: 20.2 per square arcsecond, which is why it stands out from the sky better than its brightness alone suggests. Why surface brightness is the number that matters.
Could you see it?
Straightforward with the naked eye from Bortle 1 or darker; with 10×50 binoculars from Bortle 5.
| Sky | Eye | 10×50 | 80mm | 130mm | 200mm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1 21.9 mag/□″ | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 2 21.7 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 3 21.4 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 4 20.9 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 5 20.3 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 6 19.3 mag/□″ | No | Challenge | Challenge | Challenge | Challenge |
| Bortle 7 18.6 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
| Bortle 8 18.1 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
| Bortle 9 17.8 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
At the eyepiece
Bright enough to find in binoculars and detailed enough to hold a large telescope. The two lobes are obvious at 100mm; at 250mm with an OIII filter the fainter material filling in the sides appears and it stops being a dumbbell and becomes something rounder and stranger.
When, and from where
Highest in the middle of the night in July. Passes overhead at 23°N and rises from everywhere except the far south — below 67°S it never clears the horizon.
| Latitude | Highest it gets | |
|---|---|---|
| 60°N Oslo, Anchorage | 53° | |
| 51°N London, Calgary | 62° | |
| 40°N New York, Madrid | 73° | |
| 30°N Cairo, Houston | 83° | |
| 0°N the equator | 67° | |
| 33°S Sydney, Cape Town | 34° |
Nearby in the sky
The whole catalogue →One more of the catalogue sits within five degrees, close enough to take in on the same night without moving far. Everything below is measured from M27 itself, not from the middle of Vulpecula.
- M71 Globular cluster 4.2° apart Sagitta · magnitude 8.2 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M56 Globular cluster 12° apart Lyra · magnitude 8.3 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M29 Open cluster 17° apart Cygnus · magnitude 6.6 · binoculars from Bortle 9 or darker
- M57 Ring Nebula 18° apart Lyra · magnitude 8.8 · binoculars from Bortle 6 or darker
Terms on this page
- White dwarf The exposed core a low-mass star leaves behind, Earth-sized and slowly cooling forever.
One of 110. Positions J2000; the sky is the final authority.