The Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Apple Core Nebula, Messier 27, M 27, or NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about 1,360 light years.

This object was the first planetary nebula to be discovered; by Charles Messier in 1764. At its brightness of visual magnitude 7.5 and its diameter of about 8 arcminutes, it is easily visible in binoculars, and a popular observing target in amateur telescopes.

This is a special Crowd image, made from all the Creative Commons licensed images.M27 is a very popular object, and therefore there are many nice shoots. All 99 images were aligned and stacked into one image with very high SNR. Then the 46 sharpest, and 42 deepest exposures were stacked separately, and all stacks were combined using masks. The combined stack was then enhanced, and an extracted luminance and the red channel was mixed (50/50) into a new luminance layer, which was then combined into a LRRGB image.