Bubble nebula (C11/NGC7635/Sh2-162) and its surroundings including the Brain Nebula (NGC7538/Sh2-158) and the Salt and Pepper Cluster (M52/NGC7654/Cr455/Mel423) (c-sho-hubble)

[ramdom]

Total integration: 1080 minutes/18 hours (72 x 5m for S2/red + 60 x 5m for Ha/green + 84 x 5m for O3/blue).
Camera: QHY163M (16mp mono) CMOS cooled to -15 degrees C.
Telescope: Takahashi FC100DF Steinheil fluorite doublet apochromat
refractor @ f/4.9.
Reducer: Takahashi FC-35 2".
Mount: Paramount MyT.
Filters: Astrodon 5nm Ha, 3nm O3, 3nm S2.
Software: Sharpcap, PixInsight, Nebulosity, Photoshop CC. (Minimal processing.)

Image resized to 20% for upload to the forum which results in pixellation artifacts. Full sized image is here: http://ram.org/images/space/scope/1.7.4.5/ngc7635_sho.v0.2.2.jpg

I really wanted to do a widefield image that grouped a bunch of my favourite objects, the beautiful Bubble, the open cluster M52, and the underappreciated nebula NGC7538. Each of these would've been better done in one of my bigger scopes, but I decided to get them all in with my 4" Takahashi in order to better capture the surrounding nebulosity. There's actually even more nebulosity in the bottom---enough to make for a second panel---which someday I hope to get to).

The other issue is that this was done over six days, with each filter having two sets of data. I sometimes wonder if less is more since in the livestacked images, one day's session turned out to look better than the other. So if I used the best day for each filter, I'd be using a smaller number of total images but I think the image produced may be slightly better. Something to do on a rainy day I suppose but I really don't like to spend too much time on processing. 

I'm currently in Thailand with my ETX80 and I'd like to finish my Messiers but it's the monsoon season and it's very cloudy here. 

--Ram

PS: When I put in the link, it seems to embed the image in a better way in the preview than the manually resized version below,  but then the link shows up broken.  Here's another attempt.

 

[xtreemchaos]

WOW loads to see there, well done, I love the colours, widefield at its best. thanks, charl.

[alanjgreen]

Great image.

You also got sh2-159 (small patch with 2 stars). I have spent a long time in this area recently with the night vision. Sky safari has sh2-159 shown as sh2-158 which threw me for a while. Sh2-158 is definitely the small bright patch at 3 o’clock in your image.

Plenty of great nebula in this area!

Alan

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Wow. That is just beautiful. ?

You've won 2 prizes in my opinion. 

1. The most colourful neb shot.

2. The longest thread title on SGL. Ever.

 

John

[simmo39]

Just stunning!

[MarsG76]

Great image... the colors are something different but look great.