Not the best image I’ve ever seen of this object but considering that’s just a 20 minute exposure taken from the driveway behind the house, surrounded by street lights and lights from the neighbors and taken with a telescope the size of a lunch box, it’s not bad at all. Taken with a SeeStar S30 Pro around 10 PM local time.
Background: Often called the Bubble Nebula because if you zoom in up there you’ll see what looks like a bubble being blown in the middle of the image. At the center of that is a very hot, very bright and very big star known as SAO 20575. This is a massive, blue-white O type star that has 45 times the mass of our sun and is thousands of times brighter. It’s about 7500 light years from Earth. It’s not only putting out enormous amounts of radiation, it’s also producing a “stellar wind”, material being blown off the star, at about four million miles per hour. The stellar wind impacting the surrounding molecular cloud causes a sort of shock wave effect that makes the bubble structure and the intense radiation causes the gas cloud to “light up” so to speak.
SAO 20575 is doomed to an early death. It’s still an infant, so to speak. It’s only about 2 million years old but when it comes to stars, bigger isn’t better. Stars this size burn through their nuclear fuel faster than a keg of beer at a frat party. It’s already burned through all of its hydrogen and is burning helium now. In another few million years, maybe 10 or 12, it will run out of fuel and gravity will take over. It will collapse in on itself and blow up in a spectacular fashion ending in a supernova.
Damn astronomy is fun!
grouchyfarmer 