M57, The Ring Nebula in Lyra
First attempt at the Ring Nebula.
The Ring Nebula has always been a little out of my reach, photographically. At 1' in diameter, it's a really,
really small object. The Nikon D70's big sensor covers a large area of sky, even at the 2000mm focal length
of the 8" SCT. However, since the ring now covers something like 75x75 pixels on the sensor (it was under 40x40 with
Veronica), I decided to give it a try. My assumptions that I wouldn't be able to pull a lot of fine detail turned out
to be well-founded. I can attack this object again and give it a little longer exposure (30sec images are probably
too short), but this object (and objects in general that are smaller than 5') are going to continue to give me problems.
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©2004 Jimbo S. Harris
