The Bubble Nebula Region of the Milky Way Galaxy
The Bubble Nebula appears at the very centre of the wide-field image below. It is actually a shock wave of gas and dust pushed outward by a powerful star 45X the size of our sun at the centre.
Surrounding the Bubble Nebula are pink molecular clouds of hydrogen, but oxygen also appears as blue, with nitrogen as green, resulting in an unusual teal coloured background.
At a distance of only 7,000 light-years, consider it nearby on a galactic scale of 100,000 light-years. This tiny bubble is a mere 6 light-years across. However, this is 1000X larger than the 2 light-DAYS span of our tiny solar system (6x365/2 = 1095 times larger than our solar system)
This is a faint object for a backyard telescope, and requires 5 minute exposures. I took 144 images (12 hours of photography). I photographed the Bubble Nebula Region from my garden in Strasbourg France over three nights in August 2025.
