In the border of Cepheus and Cassiopeia constellations some interesting objects can be found. The most famous is probably Bubble Nebula (NGC7635 aka Sharpless 162 aka Caldwell 11). One may try to recognize it by himself at the picture below and really should not fail 🙂
It is HII region emission nebula. The bubble shape is created by the stellar wind from a massive hot young central star that is thought to have a mass of 10-40 Solar masses (can be seen in the upper left part of the ‘bubble’). The bubble expansion is beeing suppressed by external molecular cloud. Nebula is placed about 11,000 light years away and has been discovered by William Herschel in 1787 year.
In the right part of the picture you will find NGC7538 nebula. This one is located 9,100 light years away from Earth. It is home to the biggest yet discovered protostar which is about 300 times the size of our Solar System. The nebula is a region of active star formation.
To the left there is easly recognized Messier 52 open star cluster. It is evaluated at about 35 million years old cluster that contains about 190 identified members. Can be spotted with binoculars.
Below M52 you can see 3 bright stars, and just behind it there is Czernik 43 open cluster. It is much more scattered than M52 and contains 30-40 stars.
The middle and left picture part seem to be a little bit reddish because all this region contains hydrogen clouds that are excited by nearby stars and radiates in red color (hydrogen line 656nm). It is a perfect region for narrowband astrophotography, but DSLR can also do some job here 🙂
Pictured with usual current setup: GSO 6″ F5 newtonian with FF 0.9x and modded Canon 450D. ISO800, subexposure time 5 minutes, total 6.5h.
Clear skies!
