NGC7635 The Bubble Nebula

The Bubble Nebula is an unusual planetary nebula located
on the edge of the constellation Cassiopeia. The central
star, which is hard to miss, is the largest star in this image
weighing in at 40 times the mass of our sun. Its extremely
strong stellar wind results in an ever expanding shockwave
that is so fast and powerful that it literally slams into previous
stellar ejections to form the ever expanding 'bubble' wall that
we see. The bubble is expanding at the rate of 2000 kilometers
a second or 4 million miles per hour.

The nebula itself is about 6 light years across which means
that the distance from the sun to our nearest star, Alpha
Centauri, would easily fit within it.

This image was made by merging two images in Photoshop -
the color image taken with a Toucam SC1.5 webcam and a
black and white image taken with an ATK-2HS webcam. The
2HS webcam has a higher resolution which allows us to see
the actual 'bubble' of the nebula more clearly. The b&w image
was taken during a full moon so as time goes by I'll try to
improve this photo by imaging during a dark sky night and
then recombine the images.

Techno Stuff: Color image with Toucam SC1.5, 9/13/04 at 4:20am est (9:20am ut), LX-90 8" sct, baader ir, gain 70%, gamma 30%, saturation 50%, brightness 50%, white balance-outside, 125 frames x 45.5 secs,60 frames out of 125 processed in k3ccdtools, registax and photoshop, dark frames used

Black & White image with ATK-2HS 10/1/04 at 12:47am est (5:47am ut), LX-90 8" sct, baader ir, 0.6 focal reducer, gain 70%, gamma 0%, saturation 50%, brightness 50%, white balance-outside, 128 frames x 23.5 secs, 65 frames out of 128 processed in k3ccdtools, registax and photoshop, dark frames used