A while back I was browsing Astrobin when I came across pictures of the Bubble Nebula. It is really stunning to see for the first time. I mean.. it literally looks like a bubble. The striking thing about it, is the bright nebulous region inside the bubble, which makes it look like a bubble reflection. This is one of the only nebulas that actually look like it's name (I mean seriously.. the Crescent Nebula looks nothing like a Crescent, maybe Croissant?)
Before this year, there's no way I would've been able to capture this. A DSLR with a sub-par narrowband filter is not enough. This target is quite dim and needs lots of exposure integration. I spent 27.5 hours exposure on this target, the large majority of it in the Ha (Hydrogen-alpha) bandwidth, since this target has an overwhelming amount of HA signal compared to OIII and SII. For me, processing this was a bit tricky. The usual method of combining the narrowband palette netted me with an overwhelmingly red image. It took a good 3-4 hours of processing before I was satisfied with the results. I combined elements together, from the SHO (Sulfur/Hydrogen/Oxygen) image to the HOO (Hydrogen/Oxygen/Oxygen) image. Raw frames:
Skywatcher Esprit 120ED Super APO Triplet ZWO ASI1600mm-Cool Orion Atlas EQ-G Guiding telescopes: Orion ST80 Guiding cameras :ZWO ASI224MC Software: Adobe Photoshop 2020 , PixInsight 1.8 , DeepSkyStacker (DSS) Deek Sky Stacker 4.2.0, Starnet++ Chroma SHO 1.25" mounted Sesto Senso 2 Electronic Focuser
Chroma HA 3nm - 387x250 Chroma OIII 3nm - 84x250 Chroma SII 3nm - 40x250
Chroma RGB - 10 x 60 each
I think at 840mm, which is my scope's focal length, it was difficult to capture the detail inside the bubble. It's a small target. Maybe one day I can re-visit this with a much bigger scope.
Also, check out this cool nebulosity that I found in the bottom left of the image. It's hard to tell whether it's part of the Bubble nebula complex, or something else:
