NGC 7662: Planetary nebula in Andromeda

RA: 23hrs 25min 54sec   Dec: 42º 33' 00"  Mag: 9.0   Distance: 1800 light years   Constellation: Andromeda

Also classified as Caldwell 22.  The orange star at the bottom of the picture is 10 Andromedae.  This photo was taken on the 30th of August 2005.  In larger telescopes, there is a gap in the green-blue fuzz with a star at the centre, but with my 8" - I was content to observe just the green haze of this small planetary nebula.  The dense small nebulosity appears circular in this photo at f6.3, but references describe an ellipsoid shape which may be more obvious had I taken a longer exposure.

The photo is the combination of two exposures, 7x15 seconds and 20x15 seconds giving a total exposure time of  6.75 minutes.  The raw images were combined with MaximDL and saved as an 8 bit tiff.  The histogram was stretched, particularly to the dark end to eliminate the sky glow at the expense of some of the surrounding stars and no midtone enhancement was carried out as it caused the stars to 'bloom' unnaturally.

Problem: too short an exposure - more detail is likely to have been visible had I taken a longer exposure.

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