Photo of the Week for December 26, 2015
Well situated for evening viewing in the early winter sky is Cassiopeia, with its distinctive “W” shape. The constellation is home to numerous deep-sky targets, both bright and faint. And one object that definitely falls into the latter category is the Bubble Nebula, also known by its catalogue designation, NGC7635. Although it shows up well in this deep image, the nebula is a visual target reserved for dark skies and big scopes.

Victoria, British Columbia, imager Dan Posey captured this portrait of the Bubble Nebula from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Victoria Centre’s observatory, located on the grounds of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory on Little Saanich Mountain. He used a QSI 583c CCD camera attached to the facility’s 14-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope to acquire the 380 minutes of exposure data used to create this image.