Melotte 15 - it's part of the bigger nebula - The Heart Nebula ( IC 1805). This is an open cluster of stars, also known as Collinder 26 and 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 nebula is some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by William Herschel on 3 November 1787. It is an emission nebula showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes.
The Heart Nebula is also made up of ionised Oxygen and Sulfur gasses, responsible for the rich blue and orange colours seen in narrowband images. The shape of the nebula is driven by stellar winds from the hot stars in its core. The nebula also spans almost 2 degrees in the sky, covering an area four times that of the diameter of the full moon.
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