I took my final astronomy picture in 2024 at Nöstach, where I escaped from the thick fog that covered the Vienna basin. After I ran into dew and frost cover on my photo lenses a few days earlier, I thought it would be wise to stay with my large Ritchey-Cretien telescope at longer focal lengths, being safer from condensation and ready for some smaller objects in the winter milky way. Eventually the air was not as steady as the forecasts predicted, but nevertheless I was able to capture more than 3 hours of exposure on one of the most prominent planetray nebulae in the winter sky, which is M 76.

This object, also called the "Little Dumbell" alluding to the nickname of the larger counterpart in the summer sky, has another trivial name, which is the "Butterfly Nebula". The first name reflects the appearance in the telescope, which is confined to the inner core of the gas shell surrounding the central star. The second name comes from the photographic view, including the outer shell of the bubble that the fierce stellar wind of the dying star generates.

The colours are not natural. The special filter that I used allows to pass only the light of inonized hydrogen and oxygen in dark red and blueish-green. This is the reason why the picture looks so much "dual colour" instead of the full spectrum of astronomical splendors.