Ground-based Field of View and Location of the Bubble Nebula

This graphic shows the wider context of the Bubble Nebula. The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) image (left) by Travis Rector has been rotated and cropped to be north-up and closer to the orientation of the Hubble Space Telescope image (right). In addition to the inner bubble seen in the Hubble image, the wider view shows a large cloud complex, including two larger shells surrounding the massive star near the center.

About the colours

The Hubble image (right) is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the WFC3/UVIS instrument. Several filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F502N ([O III]) Green: F656N (H-alpha) Red: F658N ([N II])

About the data

The Hubble data were provided by the HST proposal 14471 taken by the Hubble Heritage Team: Z. Levay, R. Avila, C. Christian, L. Frattare, J. Green, J. Mack, C. Martlin, S. Meyett, M. Mutchler, and S. Porter (STScI/AURA), and K. Noll (NASA/GSFC).