Owl Nebula and M108

The Owl Nebula is perched in the sky about 2,600 light-years away toward the bottom of the Big Dipper's bowl. Also cataloged as M97, the 97th object in Messier's well-known list, its round shape along with the placement of two large, dark "eyes" do suggest the face of a staring owl. One of the fainter objects in Messier's catalog, the Owl Nebula is a planetary nebula, the glowing gaseous envelope shed by a dying sun-like star as it runs out of nuclear fuel. In fact, the Owl Nebula offers an example of the fate of our Sun as it runs out of fuel in another 5 billion years. As we see it, the nebula spans over 2 light-years making it roughly 2,000 times the diameter of Neptune's orbit.  The invisible ultraviolet light ionizes hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the nebula and ultimately powers the beautiful visible light glow.

Messier 108 (M108, NGC 3556) is a nice edge-on spiral galaxy situated near the conspicuous star Beta Ursa Majoris. The nearly edge-on galaxy M108 appears to have no bulge and no pronounced core at all, it is just a detail-rich mottled disk with heavy obscuration along the major axis, with few H II regions and young star clusters exposed against the chaotic background -- in a word: "Very Dusty". There's little evidence for a well-defined spiral pattern in this Sc galaxy, which is receding at 772 km/sec. This galaxy classifies as SBcd, i.e. very late Sc, and with a bar.