Blowing bubbles

Steve Leonard, taken from Markham, Ontario, Canada

The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) is an emission nebula surrounding the star SAO 20575 in Cassiopeia; the faint shell is created by its intense winds. The imager used a 4.5-inch f/5.7 refractor to take 24 hours of SHO data and 3 hours of RGB data. The final image is a blend of a Hubble-palette rendition and a dynamic Foraxx palette, which uses a nonlinear combination of channels.