BubbleM52RegionHaProcessedForAstrogab

Here's an image of a lovely & oft-photographed field near the border between Cassiopeia & Cepheus, captured using a Tak FSQ106 and STL-11000M during the full moon weeks in September & October.

A total of twelve 600s exposures through an H-alpha filter were acquired. Then the individual frames were calibrated, Sigma-combined, DDP'd, and had curves applied.....all in MaximDL5Pro. Further processing, sharpening & noise reduction took place in Photoshop CS3 & Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools software, and any unevenness in the background was removed with Gradient Xterminator..

At the centre of this image is NGC7635 the tiny Bubble Nebula, which is sits inside a larger bubble, which in turn is immersed in the striated nebula Sharpless-162.

The prominent nebula to the lower left of the Bubble is Sharpless-157.

Also visible is the bright knot NGC7538 to the lower right. This object has an interesting future, as professional astronomers have determined that it contains at least one high-mass protostar with a rotating disc 10 times the diameter of our solar system!

Finally, just above the Bubble resides the beautiful open cluster M52. Another more scattered open cluster, Czernik43 is on the left hand border of M52, but is not clearly visible because the image was processed to bring out the HII regions, not the stars.

Thanks to very good seeing, I was able to pull out a good amount of detail (for a wide-field system) in the Bubble, however - sadly - it is lost at this image scale. To see the innermost bubble you will need to click on "View Full Size" and then click on the larger image to magnify it a bit more. Nevertheless, I am pleased with the overall results.:-)

Given everyone's impressive levels of experience in imaging & processing, I would enthusiastically welcome all constructive critique of this image! :-)