Planetary nebula
Dumbbell Nebula (M27)
In Vulpecula (Vul) • Magnitude 7.5 • 8.0 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Dumbbell Nebula pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
The first planetary nebula ever discovered — found by Messier himself in 1764 — and one of the closest to Earth at about 1,360 light-years. Despite the misleading name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets; William Herschel coined the term simply because they resembled a planet's disk through small telescopes.
Dumbbell Nebula at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M27, N 6853 |
| Type | Planetary nebula |
| Constellation | Vulpecula (Vul) |
| Right ascension | 19h 59m 35s |
| Declination | +22° 43' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 7.50 |
| Surface brightness | 13.8 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 8.0 × 5.7 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 68° |
| Best imaging months | Apr, May, Jun |
How to image Dumbbell Nebula
Dumbbell Nebula sits in the constellation Vulpecula at right ascension 19h 59m 35s and declination +22° 43' 12". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window. As a planetary nebula, Dumbbell Nebula typically appears small and intense, so a long focal length and OIII or Ha narrowband filters bring out structure.