The Bubble Nebula is a region that is dominated by hydrogen gas. The bubble has been created through the radiation of a giant star as it drives gas and dust out from the center of the bubble. The bubble itself is about 10 light years wide and is expanding at a rate of about 4 million miles per hour. It is located about 7,000 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.

This is a "hybrid" image ( Bill Mattil was kind enough to let me use his hydrogen alpha (Ha) exposure data) consisting of 6 hours and 30 minutes of exposure time from my Canon XSi camera and 4 hours of exposure time from Bill's SBIG STL11000M CCD camera using an Astrodon 6nm Ha filter. Bill was shooting through his RCOS 10" Ritchey-Chretien telescope, producing a very crisp, bright and detailed image.

Date:
June 16, 17, 21, 22, 2009 - Canon
October 23, 2007 - STL11000M
Location:
Ft. Griffin State Historic Site, Texas - Canon
Haltom City, Texas - STL11000M
Telescope:
Astro-Tech 6" Ritchey-Chretien at f/9 1370mm focal length -Canon
RCOS 10" Ritchey-Chretien at f/9 2277mm focal length - STL11000M
Mount:
Takahashi EM-11 Temma 2, guided by an SBIG ST-237 thru an E-finder at 100mm focal length - Canon
Astro-Physics AP1200GTO guided by STL-Remote with Rogue OAG - STL11000M
Camera:
Canon XSi, at prime focus; modified by Hap Griffin with the Baader filter
SBIG STL11000M using Astrodon 6nm Ha filter
Camera Control and Focusing:
ImagesPlus 3.60 (IP) - Canon
MaximDL 4.11 - STL11000M
Exposures:
51 at 5 minutes each; 17 at 8 minutes each; all at ISO 800 in Raw mode
Total Exposure time:
6 hours 30 minutes - Canon
8 at 30 minutes each with Ha filter
Total Exposure time:
4 hours - STL11000M
Composite Total Exposure time:
10 hours 30 minutes
Processing:
Converted, calibrated, de-bayered, normalized, aligned and MinMax combined
using Automatic Image Set Processing and deconvolution in IP. - Canon
Calibrated, aligned and Sigma Combined in MaximDL - STL11000M
"Hybrid" processing:
Red(80%Ha/20%Red); Green(100% Green); Blue(20%Ha/80% Blue); all stars from Canon
ImagesPlus, CCDStack, Registar and Photoshop CS2

Click on "Original" below to insure you are seeing the largest size image