NGC7538: This is an emission nebula (meaning that its light is generated by its gasses emitting light, rather than reflecting light) in Cepheus, quite near the Bubble Nebula,
of which I also have an image taken many years ago when I first started imaging. The gas forming the nebula is ionized by the bright, hot stars
toward the center of the nebula, which generates light in various wavelengths.
NGC7538 is home to the largest "protostar" yet discovered, an odd ovoid with the mass of 500 suns, with its long axis spanning about 35 light-years and its short axis about 25 light-years.
Astronomers study stellar nurseries such as NGC 7538 to better learn how stars come into being.
The nebula is about 9,100 light years from Earth, making it roughly 24 light years long (if my trigonometry is correct).
I have presented this in three different formats (accessed by repeatedly clicking on the photo, waiting for each to download the first time):
(i) A true-color version, with the color created by imaging through red, green and blue filters (with the luminance layer being a blend of luminance-filtered data and Ha-filtered data; a significant amount of ionized hydrogen emissions (Ha) and ionized sulfur emissions (SII) were blended into the red channel, and doubly-ionized oxygen emissions (OIII) data were blended into the green and blue channels, in varying percentages);
(ii) A version in the Hubble palette (a lot of the Hubble photos, including and especially the famous "Pillars of Creation," are made with this set of filters, since it's a useful set for scientists to see what's actually happening), which shows SII emissions as red, Ha emissions as green, and OIII as blue. I cheated a bit, in three ways: (i) I used a modified copy of the luminance layer from the true-color image as a luminance layer for this image, to give it better definition; (ii) I copied most of the stars from the "true-color" version into the Hubble palette version, because the Hubble palette makes most stars a vivid magenta (which I find distracting), and (iii) because the Ha in this object is so dominant, the Hubble palette version would be almost all green if left alone; so I emphasized the SII emissions (shows up as the yellowed parts) and the OIII emissions (shows up as blue), and
(iii) A grayscale version, predominantly consisting of Ha emissions, with some wide-band emissions (luminance-filtered data) included.
Copyright 2019 Mark de Regt