- M 97 The Owl Nebula
M 79 (NGC 3587) is a fairly bright planetary nebula lying close to the star Merak (β Ursa Majoris) in the bowl of the Big Dipper. With a visual magnitude of 9.9, M 79 can be viewed using binoculars or a small telescope on a dark night, where it appears as a small, softly glowing round patch. Details of the nebula can be seen using a larger telescope, including the two darker patches within it that make up the "eyes" of the face of the owl. M 97 glows strongly with OIII emissions at 495.9 nm, which give it an overall greenish-blue color. However, the outer edge of the nebula glows red with Hα emissions as the expanding gas shell collides with the surrounding interstellar medium. The central star in the nebula has a visual magnitude of 14— it is barely visible in my image. It can be seen more easily in images in which the nebula is not as saturated as in my image, which combines broad-band and narrow-band image acquisitions to emphasize the nebula. The Owl lies at a distance of around 4140 LY and has a physical diameter of about 3 LY.
Charles Messier's colleague Pierre Mechain was the first to observe this object in February 1781. Messier himself observed it in March of that year. A friend of Lord Rosse, T. R. Robinson, was the first to remark on the appearance of the nebula being similar to an animal's face, althouigh he thought it looked like a monkey. Later, it was Lord Rosse himself that described the nebula as looking like the face of an owl.
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