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CAMERA:

Canon 40D baader modified

The Heart Nebula, IC1805, Sh2-190, 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 very brightest part of this nebula (the knot at the right) is separately classified as NGC 896, because it was the first part of this nebula to be discovered.


The nebula's intense red output and its configuration are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula's centre. 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.

 

The Soul Nebula (Sharpless 2-199, LBN 667) is emission nebulae in Cassiopeia. Several small open clusters are embedded in the nebula: CR 34, 632, and 634 (in the head) and IC1848 (in the body). The object is more commonly called by the cluster designation IC1848.
Small emission nebula IC1871 is present just left of the top of the head, and small emission nebulae 670 and 669 are just below the lower back area.
This complex is the eastern neighbour of IC1805 (Heart Nebula) and the two are often mentioned together as the "Heart and Soul".

The text above is taken from Wikipedia: for the Heart and for the Soul.

The processing of this image was difficult from a star point of view. As I stretched the image got completely filled with stars, hiding the nebula. The trick was to remove the stars before stretching and then add the star layer below the non-star layer and blend using lighten (in PS CS5).

The following software has been used. MaximDL (image acquisition), CCDStack (calibration and de-convolution), PixInsight (cropping, background correction, colour corrections) and Photoshop CS5 (all the rest, incl Noel Carbonis Astronomy Tools).

Since this object is dominated by H alpha I used the red channel as the luminance when doing the LRGB combine after CCDStack calibration. The image was processed in January 2011, more than two years after it was taken.

 

LENS/OTA:

Canon 200mm

MOUNT: 

Astrotrac

IMAGE:

ISO1600

62x4min = 4hrs and 8min

FILTER:

Astronomik CLS

GUIDING:

None

GUIDE SCOPE:

None

GUIDE CAMERA:

None

CALIBRATION:

Flats and Darks

DATE:

Dec, 2008

LOCATION:

Djura, Sweden

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
     

Copyright: All images © 2008 Matts Sporre. All Rights Reserved