This is one of my favorite targets and I decided to revisit it with current gear. My previous attempt at this in 2016 can be found
here. I've got quite a different gear set now and an entirely different processing skill set and workflow. That said, I'm pretty happy that the old 683 still holds up!
At the center of the Heart Nebula (IC 1805) in Cassiopeia lies Melotte 15, a newborn star cluster that is only approximately 1.5 million years old. The surrounding nebula and dust have formed into complex shapes sculpted by the stellar winds from these young, hot stars. It's a tumultuous region and the complexity of the shock fronts and dust plumes is mesmerizing.
It's taken a long while to collect data on this due to typical New England weather and oodles of snow. This data was gathered over 4 nights scattered throughout January through March. I preprocessed this in PI, then post processed by tone mapping - used Russell Croman’s excellent StarXTerminator filter in PS, followed by a few rounds of high pass, some finesse on the central region and gas/dust plumes, a very light touch of Topaz (no sharpen, just noise) and added back the stars. Had some trouble getting them back without blowing out the larger ones - have to find a better blending mode than linear add (the background being present brightens the add too much on the stars). Added some star spikes to both draw a bit of attention to the core as well as wipe out some ugly cores on some of the brighter stars ;)
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