Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

The image below is of NGC 7635 also known as the Bubble Nebula. This nebula is around 11000 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia. The bubble is created by the stellar wind coming off a massive star inside the bubble. The bubble itself is within a larger nebula which is also glowing from the energy from the massive hot star in the bubble. This is a narrow band image using the Hubble Pallet where the Sulphur II (SII) spectral line is assigned to the Red Channel, The Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) spectral line is assigned to the Green Channel and the Oxygen III (O3) spectral line is assigned to the blue channel. When I first put the image together the Ha was so dominant that the image came out very green, so I reduced the green to allow the red and blue to be more visible. I also reduced the star intensities as they tended to distract from the nebula and used some HDR techniques on part of the bubble to allow more detail to be seen. The image was taken through a 16inch Meade Schmidt Cassegrain telescope at to focal length of 4096 mm. All questions comments and suggestions are welcome.
Other versions of this nebula can be seen at my website (which is still a work in progress) at
https://ballardbare.smugmug.com/


For those interested the following exposures were used with the camera set to a gain of 100, using 1x1 binning and the temperature set to -20C.

51 exposures at 500 seconds each using the 5nm Ha filter.
50 exposures at 500 seconds each using the 5nm OIII filter.
51 exposures at 500 seconds each using the 5nm SII filter.
Total exposure time 21 hours 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

All the exposures were calibrated with the appropriate Bias, Flat and Dark Frames.

The black and white frames below are the stacked images for each individual filter used.

Hubble Pallet image of the Bubble Nebula

(Download)

Ha image of the Bubble Nebula. Note: Hydrogen gas is dominant throughout the image.

(Download)


(Download)

SII image of the Bubble Nebula. Note: Singly ionized sulfur is mainly in outer nebula and a few spots around the bubble.

(Download)

Wanda Krack Loc: Tennessee, USA

Wow, impressive!

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Mr. B Loc: eastern Connecticut

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

COOL!

NMGal Loc: NE NM

Awesome!

kpmac Loc: Ragley, La

Very nice.

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Amazing picture and amazing work, Ballard!

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Wanda
Thanks for checking out the image of the Bubble Nebula and for the comment.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi yssirk123
Thank you for all the Thumbs up and for checking out the photos of the Bubble Nebula

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Mr. B
Thanks for the Thumbs up and for viewing the image of the Bubble Nebula.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Longshadow
Thanks for viewing the image of the Bubble Nebula and for the comment.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi NMGal
Thanks for viewing the photo of the Bubble Nebula and for the comment.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi kpmac
Thanks for the comment and for checking out the images of the Bubble Nebula.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi weberwest
Thanks for checking out the images of NGC 7635 and for the comment.