Vain Queen Cassiopeia sits on her throne high in the Autumn sky. Surrounded by the rest of her mythological family; hubby Cepheus, damsel in distress daughter Andi, whose head is also part of the mighty winged horse Pegasus - youch!, and the whale with that smiley face, Cetus, who has a dinner date with our women in chains, the afore mentioned Andromeda. Luckily for all concerned, in this tale Andi is not destined for whale chow, thanks to that celestial Dudley Do-Right, Perseus. He does the right thing, rescuing her and marrying her to boot! Isn't mythology swell!! But you all know that tale. My tale is the stalking of the Jewel in the crown of Queen Cassiopeia, the Bauble, er, Bubble nebula. NGC 7635.

Illuminated by a 6.9 mag star and at 15 X 8 arcminutes in size this object should be a challenging yet achievable project, we thought, on August 22, the night of the Fremont Peak Star-B-Que. Categorized as an emission nebula, sometimes as a nova remnant, an unusual HII region located only 36' SW of M52, this jewel is just a cluster hop away from easy M52, a large rich 100 star cluster. However on this night, it eluded a couple of us who were on a treasure hunt thru the queen's jewels. Mike Koop and I tried using two different atlases, one showing stars to 6th magnitude, and the HB Atlas, which goes lower - to 9th mag. The seeing that night just wouldn't support seeing such a faint, large luminous shell of nebulosity. We tried various eyepieces and a few filters, but no luck. We certainly could identify the stars, we couldn't see the Bubble, our nemesis.

Each night thereafter, I gazed up at her, and in my mind had a little conversation with the queen. I wanted to see that Bubble nebula something fierce! Well Saturday night one week later there we were at the annual SJAA Slide and Equipment night, and Mike reminded me of our fruitless search, and that I had neglected to mention it in my Star-B-Que article, actually mixing it up with the search for Braxendell's Nebula - certainly a member of the "Ain't-no" galaxy catalogue. The Bubble ain't no "Ain't-no" however. It exists, and I wanted it. Getting into my car for the drive home, I looked up at Queen Cass one more time.

She sneered at me with that crooked smile of hers and mocked me. Like Gollum hoarding it's "Precious", she beckoned me. She beckoned Strider, my 12.5 inch F5.74 travelling companion. Before I knew what hit me, I was half way to Fremont Peak. The moon was setting, and the conditions looked good. I wanted to try to catch it in the 30 inch Challenger Telescope.

Let me tell you that it was not an easy object to see at first! It was easy to convince the group at the telescope that night to join me in my quest, however. Aiming that scope towards Cassiopeia wasn't that difficult. But how to get to the eyepiece was another matter! The group at the observatory that night were willing to let me try go for it, and we performed some dance of the ladder routines. After plenty of looks at M52, and the other nearby clusters we were all able to see the Bauble. In the refractor, in the 30 inch Challenger. Not only did we see the crescent or comma shaped arc of nebulosity, we could see the pretty mag 10 and 11 double star nearby. 2 degrees to the southwest is another large and faint clump of nebulosity. Each of the 4 observers, Mojo - running the scope that night, Peter Lord, another observer named Steve I think, and I all saw this nebulosity as well. We were unable to see the entire bubble shaped sphere, but easily could spot the main arcs, especially with the UHC filter, and through a couple different eyepieces from 40MM to 16MM I think. I say easily, but it took us quite a while to find it. Then we all resumed some hunting amoung the galaxies of Dudley Do-Right, our hero, Perseus. NGC 1023, a Mag 10.5 elliptical, elongated with a little spur on the tip, NGC 869 and 884 - that's the double cluster, and 651 - peanut shaped M76, dimmest of the Messiers. We couldn't resist M33 in Triangulum or NGC 891 in Andromeda with its central bulge and showy outer arms. I didn't make a note of some of ther other objects we hunted, but we continued for quite a while, till one by one, the observers left to sleep or perchance, to dream.