The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) is an Emission Nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia, imaged last week (My third attempt) using my 8″ RASA Telescope and an ZWO CCD deep space imaging camera. This is one of my favourite deep space objects and at 11000 light years away it is a very distant and faint object, hence I used over 3 hours of exposure to bring out the Nebulosity. Indeed, the Nebulosity consists of Hydrogen Alpha, Oxygen III and Sulphur II gases, which is why I used special narrowband filters to extract only those crucial wavelengths of light.
The Bubble shape is caused by a star forty times as massive and several hundred thousand times more luminous than our sun (visible in the seven o’clock position inside the Bubble). Its enormous energy output and powerful stellar winds have blown a titanic Bubble of ionised gas measuring thirty six Trillion miles in diameter, and it is this Bubble that can be seen in the middle of the picture.
