Heart Nebula

Description

The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, Sharpless 2-190, lies some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. This is an emission nebula showing glowing gas and darker dust lanes. The nebula is formed by plasma of ionized hydrogen and free electrons.

The nebula's intense red output and its configuration are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars on the left hand side of the image. This open cluster of stars known as Melotte 15 contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of our Sun's mass. The cluster used to contain a microquasar that was expelled millions of years ago.

Equipment and processing

Telescope: Orion 8 inch F5

Mount: Orion Atlas

Camera: ST 8300M

Filters: Baader Ha,SII,OIII 7nm

Guiding: PHD

Processing: PixInsight

Capture software: Maxim

Exposures: Ha: bin1 64x600 OIII: bin2 26x600,SII: bin2 20x600

Location: Parsippany,NJ