I first imaged the planetary Nebula Messier 76 (M76, NGC 650/651) in December 2010. There are many objects which looks easy to process, but are pretty demanding. M76 is one of these, specially because of the high dynamic range between the main body and the “wings”. This is the reason why I decided to revisit M76. Luckily we had a period of very good seeing November/December 2021 and thanks to the brightness of the object, I was able to take narrowband images during moon nights.
The image is a combination of a long exposed narrowband images (Halpha 5nm/OIII 3nm) of the planetary nebula with shorter exposed RGB data of the star field.
Hello, my name is Martin Rusterholz. I’m a Swiss amateur astrophotographer living near Zurich, the biggest town in Switzerland. My interest in astronomy started when I was 16. At that time, I built my first Newtonian telescope and mount. I studied physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) which was the only study including at least some aspects of astronomy and astrophysics.
“Looking at the nights sky is an experience touching everybody deeply inside, something common to all human beings independent to the language spoken by the individuals”.
Deep-sky astrophotography is my passion.