M27 the dumbbell nebula

this is whats in store for our sun far in the future. 10,000 yeras or so ago a start similar to the sun reached the end of its life and shed its outer layers leaving behing a white dwarf. the remain start illuminates the gas that was shed similar to the way a neon light works

This is 2.5 hours of exposure from my backyard. I actually shot for 4 hours but 1.5 hours of data was useless due to occasional clouds (i shot a total of 50 5 minute sexposures and threw out 20). I hope to be able to shoot more data onit later this week if its clear. one nice thing about astrophotography is you can stack images taken over multiple days