M76 (NGC 650) Per planetary nebula
Difficulty level 3

Date of observation: 1996/09/08 00:24
Observing site: Hoshinomura
Transparency/seeing/sky darkness: 2/4/2
Instruments: 32cm Dobsonian with PL17 and 2x Barlow lens at 180x
Width of field: 0.3�‹
This is the faintest and smallest object among the Messier objects. It is an interesting object by the 32cm telescope at rather high powers. Its shape is that of a misshapen parallelogram. It looks narrower in the middle consisting of the faint northeastern part and bright southwestern part. Planetary nebulae generally do not fade even at high magnifications and are observable even under less-than-perfect sky conditions.