First Light with the Atik 16: The Bubble Nebula

I am very much an amateur at this sort of thing, but earlier this year I was able to buy at a good price an almost new Atik 16. It is an impressive camera in several respects. This image, in particular, is remarkable because it is unguided. It is 401 x 10" exposures processed and combined in Nebulosity then stretched in Registax and further stretched and modified in Photoshop Elements (including a framing effect from the Noel Carboni package, just received). The camera has remarkably high sensitivity to the Ha wavelength and generates very little noise, including remarkably low read noise. Capturing frames with it in Nebulosity is very easy.

Now, of course, this image is far from perfect. It is monochrome, unlike the sky itself, for instance. My goal was to get all the edges of the Bubble so that its shape was obvious. I also wanted to refrain from blowing out the central portion of the nebula that is the brightest. That brightest part is visible as a twisted line just under the star in the upper right of the bubble. The star above the twisted line is the one whose radiation is creating the bubble in the cloud of gas around the star and also the glow of the surrounding gas. The brightest part of the bubble is just around that star.

The Bubble Nebula is such an intriguing sight. I wanted to get in on the action of others who have seen it. Only a quite large scope would show the whole bubble structure to the eye, but I can capture it in a camera with a 135mm f/5.3 newtonian reflector from my suburban backyard. Truly great images include Croman's, the Hubble Space Telescope's, NOAO's, and Christen's. The first two of these links give more information about the nebula itself.