Far red/near infrared image of the Dumbbell Nebula

This false-color image of the Dumbbell Nebula M27, or NGC6853, was taken by the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope using a new 2k x 2k high resistivity, thick, p-channel CCD manufactured by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. These CCDs have excellent quantum efficiency at red wavelengths, and are currently being tested by NOAO (for further details, see the September 2001 NOAO Newsletter, currently only available in PDF format). The picture was created from images taken through narrow-band filters centered roughly on the H-alpha (blue) and the [SIII] 9532A emission lines (green), and an intermediate band filter centered at 1.02 microns which includes emission from HeII at 10124 A (red). The background stars show clearly in the one micron image: these stars are dimmed by foreground dust at shorter wavelengths and are not seen in a standard `true color' image, nor in a nice deep image, nor in an emission line image such as this one, also from WIYN. This is an impressive achievement for an optical imager.