The Dumbbell Nebula
Essential facts
First seen: 1764
Taken with a ground-based telescope; not sure which one.
Status: 1,360 Light-years away from us.
Rating: ★★★★★
The history
This is a planetary nebula and one of the more famous ones because it was the first one ever discovered! The person who discovered the nebula, also discovered the beehive star cluster, Charles Messier is his name. Messier discribed it as an oval nebula without stars, noting its distictive bright shape. Despite the name, planetary nebula's have nothing to do with planets! They were given this name because of their shape and visual similarity to Uranus. The reason this nebula was the given the dumbbell phrase was because Heshler the one who came up with planetary nebula thought it had two knots on the end of the visual beauty respembling a dumbbell shape. I hope you love this as much as I do!
Stamp collection
Song to listen to whilst you read!