Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  IC 1795  ·  IC 1805  ·  IC 1824  ·  IC 1831  ·  NGC 1027  ·  NGC 896  ·  PGC 101332  ·  PGC 10217  ·  PGC 138524  ·  PGC 168297  ·  PGC 2796955  ·  PGC 2796968  ·  PGC 2796973  ·  PGC 2796995  ·  PGC 2796999  ·  PGC 2797004  ·  PGC 2797009  ·  PGC 2797013  ·  PGC 2797026  ·  PGC 2797033  ·  PGC 2797052  ·  PGC 2797053  ·  PGC 2797066  ·  PGC 2797078  ·  PGC 2797082  ·  PGC 2797112  ·  PGC 2802318  ·  PGC 9892  ·  Sh2-190  ·  Sh2-191  ·  And 2 more.
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Heart Nebula (SII, Ha, OIII), JDAstroPhoto
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Heart Nebula (SII, Ha, OIII)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Heart Nebula (SII, Ha, OIII), JDAstroPhoto
Powered byPixInsight

Heart Nebula (SII, Ha, OIII)

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

As we explore our own Milky Way Galaxy we discover that there is someone up there that must love us, since there is a huge heart in the heavens for us to discover.  The Heart is almost 3 degrees wide and long in the sky.  To give you an idea, a full moon  is about 1/2 degree in the sky.  Of interest here, is the amount of doubly ionized Oxygen (OIII, which is the blue color in the image) that dominates the right lobe of the heart.  Ionized Sulfur (SII) is the RED color and Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) is the green color.  The Ha and SII overlap on the outer circumference of the Heart, while the OIII dominates the inner part of the Heart.
The Heat Nebula is 7,500 light years from earth and in the Constellation Cassiopeia.    So the light you are seeing in this image is 7,500 years old, and therefore you are looking into the paste 7,500 years.  If you are wondering what gives the Heart Nebula its glow, it is the radiation of a small cluster of stars in the center of the Heart called Melotte 15.  These stars are hot supergiant stars that are relatively young, about 1.5 million years old.  Many of these stars at the center, Melotte 15 have a mass 50 times that of our own sun.  

Acquisition:
I captured this data using Sulfur II (SII) Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) and Oxygen III (OIII) over 2 nights 8/26/2022 and 8/28/2022 at my Astronomy Club's dark sky property, San Diego Astronomy Association (SDAA) at Tierra Del Sol (TDS).  I camped there overnight on both nights.  TDS is a Bortle 3 sky versus my backyard which is a Bortle 5.5 sky.  To give you an idea the difference a dark sky makes, the signal I can collect at TDS in 1 hour, would take me 6.5 hours at my Backyard.
16 Exposures 15 minutes each, unguided, SII = 4 hours
14 Exposures 15 minutes each, unguided, Ha =  3.5 hours
13 Exposures 15 minutes each, unguided, OIII =  3.25 hours
Total Exposure 10.75 hours

I've added a plate solving algorithm from PixInsight which overlays the image and identifies the objects in the Star Catalogs.  
Click on the image, Top right click on full resolution, After it loads, top right, click on "Fit to Window"
Pay particular attention to the Primary Galaxy Catalog (PGC) catalog objects.  Hover your cursor over one of the PGC objects and click on the object and the full resolution image will come up, you will be able to identify the galaxies.  There is an interesting galaxy on the upper right side PGC2797066.

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Heart Nebula (SII, Ha, OIII), JDAstroPhoto

In these public groups

SDAA AISIG Group