Michael's sketch: Litebox 15" F/5 Dobsonian, 13mm LVW eyepiece (147x) + OIII filter.
Jane's sketch: Litebox 17.5" F/4.5 Dobsonian, 19mm Televue Panoptic eyepiece (105x) + OIII filter. Seeing 6/10, Transp 6/10 at time of Jane's sketch.
Bubble Nebula, NGC 7635
The jelly-bean shape in the center is a shell of gas ejected by a massive, hot central star. The shell of gas hits a surrounding molecular cloud (the faint outer shells), and the radiation from the central star causes everything to glow. Anza-Borrego desert, CA. 2008-11-01. Compare our sketches to this beautiful image of the Bubble Nebula from Kent Wood, which was the Astronomy Picture of the Day on 1/24/09. We were thrilled to see and sketch the surrounding outer shell - the surrounding molecular cloud. Illuminating the inner "10 light-year diameter bubble is a Wolf-Rayet star with a mass 10-20 times that of the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The Bubble nebeula is 11,000 light-years away toward the constellation Cassiopeia". This explanation courtesy of the APOD caption.
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Michael's sketch: Litebox 15" F/5 Dobsonian, 13mm LVW eyepiece (147x) + OIII filter.
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Jane's sketch: Litebox 17.5" F/4.5 Dobsonian, 19mm Televue Panoptic eyepiece (105x) + OIII filter. Seeing 6/10, Transp 6/10 at time of Jane's sketch.
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