The Bubble Nebula otherwise known as NGC 7635 is the first narrowband photo I took with my Celestron Edge HD 8”! I have taken M92, M13, and now the Bubble Nebula with it.
What is the Bubble Nebula?
The Bubble Nebula is a striking deep-sky object located in the constellation Cassiopeia, about 7,100 light-years from Earth. Measuring roughly 7 light-years across, the Bubble Nebula lies in a rich region of the Milky Way near the open star cluster M52, making it a popular target for deep-sky imaging (although this photo does not include M52). In the Northern Hemisphere, NGC 7635 is best captured during the fall months, when Cassiopeia rides high in the night sky. With its distinct spherical structure and surrounding network of glowing gas and dust, the Bubble Nebula offers an impressive field for astrophotography in both narrowband and broadband filters.
How I Took This
My Astrophotography Equipment
As mentioned above, I took this with my Celestron Edge HD 8” telescope. I also used my ASI533MM camera with Antlia 3nm narrowband filters for Ha, Sii, and Oiii. I used the Celestorn .7x reducer making the focal length about 1,499mm according to my plate solve. That’s a weird quirk of the Celestron Edge HD 8. Although it’s advertised as 2,032mm telescope and a .7x reducer would bring this down to 1,422mm, it’s actually 1499mm when plate solved. This is because the actual focal length is around 2,142mm instead of the specified 2,032mm.
Integration Time
This photo has 9.5 hours of integration time. If you are interested in seeing which filters I used in that time up, you can see the details on Astrobin.
Pixinsight Processing
For the narrowband approach, I used the Dynamic Narrowband Combinations approach instead of the SHO approach. I like the deeper red here as opposed to the orangey color that you get with the SHO method.
I processed this very similar to the way I normally process nebulas. Note: I created a video series here of each step I take in Pixinsight.
In Conclusion
This is a short post, I’ll let the photo do the talking in this case. I think it came out great for my first narrowband shot with my Edge HD 8. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
