M27 is the second largest planetary nebulae in the sky and is located in Vulpecula within the northern Milky Way.

Despite their name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. They were named originally because their discoverers observed them visually and they did not appear as stellar point sources, but rather as small diffuse objects that resembled the outer planets in our solar system such as Uranus and Neptune when seen in a telescope.

Planetary nebula are shells of gas shed by stars late in their life after using up all of their nuclear fuel. The star then ejects a significant portion of its mass in a gaseous shell, which is illuminated by its extremely hot central star, which is just the core left from the original star. This a normal process for stars in a late period of their life which also our sun will undergo in a few billion years. Planetary nebulae do not last long in cosmic terms, the shell of gas expands and diffuses becoming invisible and the star turns into a white dwarf. Most planetary nebula are bipolar, meaning symmetric with respect to one axis which is thought to be the rotation axis of the original star.

M27's central star has a magnitude of 13.8. The nebula itself, which extends to 15 arcminutes in size at it's faintest extensions, is second in size only to NGC 7293, The Helix Nebula in Aquarius. The Helix has a lower surface brightness though because of its larger size.

This image was taken with on the 3rd June 2010 with a Canon 40D DSLR and Stellarview 102ED refractor at F / 5.6. Exposure was 60 minutes, comprising of 30 x 120 seconds @ ISO 1600. Images captured and calibrated in Nebulosity. Processing with Images Plus and Photoshop. Both images cropped and enlarged.