After an entirely foggy 2024 summer in SoCal, 3 clear nights lined up perfectly with work, family, gear functioning, and lack of illnesses. I was thrilled with how this image turned out - what a beautiful deep sky object. This is an image of The Bubble Nebula, also known by Caldwell 11, taken from Redondo Beach,CA. The image is taken with a narrowband filter which filters all but the Hydrogen-alpha emission and small O-III signal - similar to other images of Orion Nebula, and the Rosette on my website. The "bubble" is generated by  stellar wind from a young, hot, central star blowing out a shell of gas. It is near a giant molecular cloud - the stuff from which stars are born - that constrains the expansion of the bubble nebula, while also a glowing emission source excited by the same central star. The bubble is about 7 light years across.

The image was taken over 3 nights and 403 images, representing 806 minutes of exposure (13.5 hours). 30 dark, 30 dark-flat, and 30 flat field calibration files were used in the stacking to create the image. The optical train was a Celestron 8" SCT telescope focal length reduced to 1280mm, on an EQ6-R mount, using an Off-Axis-Guider for auto guiding to achieve the long exposure while matching the rotation of the earth. While I'd say 90% of my imaging sessions entail some anomaly that has to be overcome (or cannot be) across the complex set of systems and environments required for successful astrophotography - gear, software glitches (usually tied to SW updates), weather, auto-guiding - I have to say this was one of the smoothest sessions ever. I would have gotten another 6 hours if the "summer of fog" didn't return after the rare 3 night run of clear skies. Nonetheless, I have a feeling I'll revisit this target in future years!