The Heart Nebula IC 1805 or Sharpless 2-190) is approximately 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the constellation Cassiopeia. This is an emission nebula showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust. The very brightest part of this nebula (the knob on the western edge) is separately classified as NGC 896, because it was the first part of this nebula to be discovered. The nebula's intense red output is driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula's center (source: wikipedia).

This was the last object I imaged at the CSP27 Star Party on 9-27-17 but I started imaging from my yard on the previous night (10 min) and finished on the night after.I would like to say this object was easy to image and easy to process and for some some this may be the case. However, I had crazy self inflicted troubles imaging at the star party. Prior to imaging the Heart I was not using the UHC filter, however, since I was using it the previous night I wanted to continue using it. Unfortunately, I did not focus properly using on it but did not realize I had a problem until 40 minutes into it. I then thought the problem was camera or the UHC filter so I decided to image it without the filter. I was then getting good data so continued imaging for another two and half hours. It was not until I imaged the following evening (when it was not 2 am) that it dawned on me that it was a focusing problem.

Processing was not any easier as I first had to decide whether to use the unfiltered data or not. After stacking various sets of data and using different stacking techniques, I it was apparent that using both the filtered and unfiltered data yielded the best result. I also used stacked using the mosaic function in order get most of the nebula. The other difficulty in processing was keeping a decent star field while getting the nebula to show up. To accomplish this I did one iteration focusing on the nebula and another iteration where I focused on the keeping the star field intact. I then blended images both by copying the nebula image onto the star field image using the following blend 60% opacity, 95% fill. I do enjoy processing with PS, however, it was a bit tedious this time.

Overall I am very happy how it turned out with my equipment but my image really would benefit from Ha-filter data. I would recommend looking at image Trevor Jones from Astrobackyard.com (https://astrobackyard.com/ic-1805-the-heart-nebula/) recently did on the Heart Nebula using an Ha-filter. It is quite impressive and I used it for a model to process my image.

Happy imaging!