Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  Bubble Nebula  ·  HD220057  ·  HD220167  ·  HD240248  ·  HD240253  ·  LBN 544  ·  LBN 548  ·  LBN 549  ·  LDN 1231  ·  M 52  ·  NGC 7635  ·  NGC 7654  ·  Sh2-162
Cosmic Bubble, Toil and Trouble; Fire burn, and Cauldron Bubble, jimwgram
Powered byPixInsight

Cosmic Bubble, Toil and Trouble; Fire burn, and Cauldron Bubble

Cosmic Bubble, Toil and Trouble; Fire burn, and Cauldron Bubble, jimwgram
Powered byPixInsight

Cosmic Bubble, Toil and Trouble; Fire burn, and Cauldron Bubble

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

“Floating on a fuming lake,
In the celestial cauldron boil and bake;
Hydrogen and oxygen, sulfur and more,
Energized from a stellar core,
Ionized gases, swirling bright,
Hot young star, burn, ignite,
For a charm of cosmic trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."


What prophecy might the witches stirring this elemental soup in its cosmic cauldron make? Something wicked indeed: There is no double-meaning here, as the fate of BD +602522 is sealed. The star is condemned to a short but brilliant life (sort of like a candle in the wind ).  Astronomers believe that this 4-million-year-old star will be around for another 10 to 20 million years, ultimately burning out in the most dramatic way possible for a star: supernova.

NGC 7635 in the constellation Cassiopeia is an emission nebula surrounding this over-achiever star about 7,100 light years away. It's known as the Bubble Nebula -- and it is literally a "bubble" of expanding gases.  BD +602522 is a hot, massive star (45 times larger than our sun), whose stellar winds have triggered an expanding shockwave that formed the shell of the bubble.  The Bubble Nebula itself is 7 light-years in diameter. The blue light within and around the shell is from super-heated Oxygen ignited by the star that powers the stellar tempest -- a gale-force windstorm growing outward at over 6 million kilometers per hour.  

This image is the result of about 21 hours of narrowband data, captured over 10 nights between November 22 and December 23.  Most nights I only captured an hour or two of data, while waiting for other targets to rise high enough.  Not all of the data was great quality -- most of it was taken from my Bortle 7+ location (except one night in Santa Ysabel, Bortle 4ish), there were some nights where high-altitude clouds may have gone by unnoticed by me, or where my focus was not perfect.  72 frames were rejected (about 3.6 hours total).

I processed this with Russel Croman's BlurXterminator and EZ Denoise, then combined the Ha, Oiii, and Sii masters with the Forax technique of mapping the NB channels in Pixelmath:
https://thecoldestnights.com/2020/06/pixinsight-dynamic-narrowband-combinations-with-pixelmath/

I then split the Pixelmath output to RGB and recombined with Ha as Luminance.  Fiddled with curves, some minimal post-processing in Topaz Denoise and Photoshop.  
Thanks for looking!

Comments

Revisions

  • Cosmic Bubble, Toil and Trouble; Fire burn, and Cauldron Bubble, jimwgram
    Original
  • Final
    Cosmic Bubble, Toil and Trouble; Fire burn, and Cauldron Bubble, jimwgram
    B

B

Description: Some tweaking of the image -- trying to dial back the blue in the OIII region a bit so the colors feel a little more natural.

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Cosmic Bubble, Toil and Trouble; Fire burn, and Cauldron Bubble, jimwgram