H-NGC6210 — Turtle Nebula

About

Hercules holds this planetary nebula, nicknamed the Turtle Nebula, roughly 6,000 light-years from us. A dying star lighter than the Sun shed its gas, and Hubble images reveal jets of material escaping through gaps in its inner layers. It lies some 38° out of the Milky Way's plane, so little dust dims it.

Imaging tips

• Only about 1′ across, so it is too small to frame: use a long focal length and a fine pixel scale.
• At 17.4 mag/arcsec² it is bright, so size and dynamic range make it hard rather than faintness. One imager called it a real challenge for exactly those two reasons.
• A BAA article notes that wide-field telescopes suit small planetaries poorly, and few images of this one reached the society's archive.
• One image in that article combined RGB (47 × 60 s), Hα (45 × 120 s) and 3 nm OIII (43 × 120 s), showing internal structure.
• Best around May and June; it peaks near 64° altitude from 50°N.