Soap bubble nebula

The Bubble Nebula was discovered on July 6, 2008 by the amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich and on 16 July 2009 by the International Astronomical Union ( IAU) recognized as a new planetary nebula PN G75.5 1.7 with the name.

The fine spherical structure located in the outer regions of a hydrogen cloud in the constellation Cygnus, close to the crescent nebula NGC 6888 and is due to their very delicate coloring on special photographs hardly recognizable. An independent discovery was made on 16 July 2008 the amateur astronomer K.Quattrocchi and Mel Helm; a color composite of the second discoverer was selected by NASA and MTU on November 13, 2008 Astronomy Picture of the Day.

This discovery recordings were made with narrow-band filters in the light of the red - H alpha and SII spectral lines or the cyan o- III line of 21 hours of exposure time. The fact that in this well-studied site of the Milky Way, a mist remained hidden for so long is due to its extremely low contrast against the surrounding hydrogen HII region. This old remnant of a "star body " still shows more delicate filaments and encouraged now to search for similar gas clouds in our galaxy.

If the Bubble Nebula is how this cloud in a similar distance, it is about 4,000 light-years away from Earth. Further spectroscopic investigations need to give further information on the characteristics and the emergence of the bubble nebula.

Links and literature

• Website of a nearly contemporaneous observer
• High-resolution images of the bubble nebula
• A bubble in Cygnus - Astronomy Picture of the Day on 13 November 2008.
• J.Pöpsel, S.Binneweis: Bubble Nebula - ball round game of hide. SuW, November 2009