Planetary nebula
Little Dumbbell Nebula (M76)
In Perseus (Per) • Magnitude 10.1 • 2.7 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Little Dumbbell Nebula pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
Often listed as the faintest object in the Messier catalogue, the Little Dumbbell is a small planetary nebula in Perseus with a central barrel-shaped structure and two fainter lobes extending from each end. It was long catalogued as two separate objects (NGC 650 and NGC 651) before astronomers realised they were photographing different parts of the same nebula.
Little Dumbbell Nebula at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M76, N 650 |
| Type | Planetary nebula |
| Constellation | Perseus (Per) |
| Right ascension | 01h 42m 25s |
| Declination | +51° 34' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 10.10 |
| Surface brightness | 12.2 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 2.7 × 1.8 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 83° |
| Best imaging months | Jul, Aug, Sep |
How to image Little Dumbbell Nebula
Little Dumbbell Nebula sits in the constellation Perseus at right ascension 01h 42m 25s and declination +51° 34' 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, Little Dumbbell Nebula typically appears small and intense, so a long focal length and OIII or Ha narrowband filters bring out structure.