The Bubble Nebula: NGC 7635 in Cassiopeia | WIYN Telescope

The Bubble Nebula: NGC 7635 in Cassiopeia | WIYN Telescope

What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. The featured striking view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Seen here above and right of the Bubble's center, a bright hot star is embedded in the nebula's reflecting dust. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star (that likely has a mass 10 to 20 times that of the Sun) has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the constellation Cassiopeia.

This central, cosmetically corrected view of NGC 7635 shows the nebulosity carved out by the winds of the massive central star and demonstrates the exquisite image quality of the One Degree Imager camera on the WIYN 3.5-m telescope.

The Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOIRLab (WIYN) Observatory is situated atop Kitt Peak National Observatory, a partnership consisting of University of California Irvine, Purdue University, the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, and NASA.

Learn more about the WIYN Observatory:

https://www.wiyn.org/0.9m/index.html

Image Credit: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), WIYN ODI team & WIYN/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Caption Credit: NoirLab/NASA Goddard

Release Date: Sept. 4, 2012

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