Widefield Image: Bubble Nebula, Northern Lagoon Nebula, Scorpion Cluster, and Sh2-159

The Bubble Nebula is a beautiful HII emission nebula in the Constellation Cas and is about 7,000 – 8,000 light years (ly) away from Earth, and about 7,000 ly wide.

At the center of the Bubble is SAO 20575, a very large, bright (magnitude -5.5), and hot Wolf-Rayet star that creates the stellar winds which form the Bubble.

Also in the image are several named structures as well as several structures that weren't identified in my annotations (see the attached annotated image).  Besides the Bubble Nebula (Sh2-162, NGC 7635), the other named structures in this image include:

- The Northern Lagoon Nebula (Sh2-158, NGC 7538)
- The open star cluster called the Scorpion Cluster (M52, NGC 7654)
- The emission nebula, Sh2-159

My intent was really to see how a camera with smaller (2.9 micron) pixels paired with my William Optics RedCat 61 (f/4.9) scope, so I just went with a standard (red) palette and didn't do a lot of color processing.  The image scale was about 2"/pixel.  Let me know what you think.  (The seeing on the night I imaged looked to me to be poor to average.)

All in all, I'm very happy with the results and the amount of detail rendered by the combination of the RedCat 61 and the ASI585MC Pro.

Capture Date: 6/15/2024

Equipment

William Optics RedCat 61 WIFD (f/4.9)
ASI585MC Pro OSC camera with a 5-position ZWO filter wheel
ZWO 30F4 guidescope with an ASI120MM mini guide cam
ASIAir, AM5 mount

Filters:

Antlia Dual Narrowband 5nm Ha/OIII: 32x300s [2:40]
Antlia Dual Narrowband 5nm SII/Hb: 9x300s [0:45]
ZWO UV/IR cut Luminance filter (for RGB stars) 20x60s [0:20]

Total Exposure: 3:45

Processed with PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop