Deep Perspective: M97 and M108

As a matter of chance, the two Messier objects M97 and M108 are situated so close together in the sky that they can be seen in one wide field of view. This chance alignment gives an opportunity to make deep-perspective images: Planetary nebula M97, as well as the foreground stars, are situated within the Milky Way and at most several thousands of lightyears away (M97: about 2600 ly), while M108 lies at 45 million lightyears.

[M97&M108, R. Dickman]

Russ Dickman obtained this beautiful image of both Messier objects M97 and M108 near Beta UMa on March 11, 1999, from Chilcoot, California. He used a AP130 EDT f/8 refractor to obtain this composite image of 3 60-min exposures on unhypered PPF 120 film.

  • More images by Russ Dickman

    Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org)
    Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

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    Last Modification: 21 Feb 2000 12:00 MET