9/06/03 NGC 7635 The Bubble Nebula

How cool is this thing? One would assume that this is a planetary nebula - the shell of gas left over after a Sun-like star has exploded. However, NASA scientists have used Hubble to study this object and they believe that the solar wind from a collection of massive stars is pushing the surrounding gas in their region into this bubble shape. I took this shot using my Hydrogen Alpha filter as the Red channel. The Ha filter has the benefit of not being affected by moon-light. The moon was just past first quarter and fairly high in the sky when the Ha channel was taken. It was a beautifully transparent night and I was able to get a full 2 hours of Ha data before switching over to the luminescence, green and blue filters.