Back to the Bubble Nebula
The Bubble Nebula still has a soft spot in my heart… it’s what really got me going with astro-imaging years ago. It’s just such a fascinating, gorgeous object and it really inspired me the first time I saw it.
Here’s my deepest exposure of it yet: over 20 hours of exposure time, in the “Hubble palette” of false color where red is ionized Sulfur, green is ionized Hydrogen, and blue is ionized Oxygen. You can really see how the bubble itself – being pushed away from the solar wind of the star within it – is heavy in Oxygen. The stars were processed separately from real RGB exposures and are true color.
For fun, there’s also a take here where the stars were removed with AI, which results in a more artistic look.
