Image taken with OSC camera and dual band L-eXtreme filter across two nights in October 2021.
For the first time I elaborated the colors in a H, H+O, O fashion, following a process kindly suggested by
@Elmiko, and nicely presented by lukomatico in his Youtube tutorial.
Westerhout 5 (Sharpless 2-199, LBN 667, Soul Nebula) is an emission nebula located in Cassiopeia. Several small open clusters are embedded in the nebula: CR 33 and 34 are visible in this picture. The object is more commonly called by the cluster designation IC 1848, that is out of this picture, west.
Small emission nebula IC1871 is present center left of the image.
W5, a radio source within the nebula, spans an area of sky equivalent to four full moons and is about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. Like other massive star-forming regions, such as Orion and Carina, W5 contains large cavities that were carved out by radiation and winds from the region's most massive stars. According to the theory of triggered star formation, the carving out of these cavities pushes gas together, causing it to ignite into successive generations of new stars. The images of Soul Nebula offered some of the best evidence yet for the triggered star formation theory. Scientists have been able to show that the ages of the stars become progressively and systematically younger with distance from the center of the cavities.
(Wikipedia excerpt with limited editings)
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