2,610 Minutes: 1,535 minutes Ha-OIII 7nm, 1,075 IR/UV Cut (1X1)
ZWO FF107 107mm Astrograph (f/7)
ZWO ASI2600MC-Air (26 Megapixel astronomical color camera)
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The Cresent and Soap Bubble Nebulae
The Crescent Nebula
At the heart of the Crescent Nebula is an extremely rare, massive, super-hot star that is nearing the end of its life. Its waffled appearance is the result of the star using its strong stellar winds to tear apart a shell of surrounding material it blew off 250,000 years ago.
This multicolored picture reveals the shell of matter is a network of filaments and dense knots, all enshrouded in a thin "skin" of gas [seen in blue]. The whole structure looks like oatmeal trapped inside a balloon. The skin is glowing because it is being blasted by ultraviolet light from the central star.
The Soap Bubble Nebula
The Soap Bubble Nebula was first seen by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich on June 19, 2007 and again on July 6, 2008. The nebula was later independently imaged by astrophotographers Keith B. Quattrocchi and Mel Helm on July 17, 2008. The discovery was finally confirmed when Lubos Kohoutek, from the Observatory Hamburg Germany, was able to find the object on older records of the Palomar Observatory.
This gigantic sphere of gas and dust lies in the outskirts of a giant molecular hydrogen cloud, towards the northern constellation Cygnus, making it very hard to detect. As a reference to its circular appearance, it's known as planetary nebula. These types of nebulae are created when a dying sun-like star expands and throws its outer layers into space. The Soap Bubble nebula is estimated to be approximately 5 light years in diameter and is located about 4,000 light years from Earth.
How this image was produced
Special filters can be placed in front of cameras that only pass the glow emitted by specific ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This picture used that technique and assigned a unique color to each element: hydrogen atoms are tinted red and the hue for oxygen is blue-green. These color assignments were then adjusted by applying the Foraxx color pallet. The Foraxx palette adjusts the contribution of each channel based on the pixel values themselves, leading to more nuanced and accurate color representation.
This image was exposed under relatively bright Bortle 5- 6 skies.
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