IC3568 - The Lemon Slice

We are excited to introduce IC 3568, The Lemon Slice Nebula.   This collaborative project was born from the minds of two obsessive and perhaps overly-stubborn astrophotographers, Jason Guenzel and Douglas J Struble.  This planetary nebula is exceedingly small when viewed from Earth.  The bright inner core measures just 6 arc-seconds, placing it somewhere around the apparent size of Mercury in the sky.  Put another way ... it's a bit like photographing an actual lemon slice from a distance of 1 mile (1.6 km)! We pushed our techniques (and sanity) into new territory in an attempt to reveal the tiniest of details from our collective dataset. The results simply would not have been possible without our combined and experimental efforts in capture and processing.  The image displayed here was fully deconstructed into constituent parts and then reassembled into a view that encapsulates an incredible dynamic range, providing a look deep into this planetary nebula while also revealing its place