One of only four planetary nebulae to be included in Charles Messier’s famous catalogue, fabulous Messier 76 (NGC 650/651) in Perseus rewards observers and imagers alike with its dramatic two-loop or -lobe appearance, which sufficiently resembles that of summer’s famous Dumbbell Nebula (Messier 27) in Vulpecula for it to go by the nickname the ‘Little Dumbbell’. While M76 is a fair bit fainter and smaller than M27, and has an unwelcome but well-deserved reputation as one of the toughest objects in Messier’s list to observe, a small telescope will identify it and telescopes in the 200–250mm (eight- to ten-inch) class can start to define and detail its distinctive shape and nebulosity. Messier 76 is a beautiful and dramatic looking planetary nebula living in the magnificent, far-northern constellation of Perseus. Planetary nebulae are the short-lived end-point in the lives of Sun-like stars, their outer layers expelled with the hot core exposed as an ever-cooling white dwarf remnant, its strong ultraviolet radiation ionising the tenuous surrounding envelope and producing an incredible variety of beautiful nebulae. M76’s hourglass figure Messier 76 exhibits a remarkable bi-polar structure in deep images, a central, brighter area that has been variously coined a ‘box’, a ‘cork’ or