The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, is about 7,500 light-years away in Cassiopeia. It is an emission nebula with oodles (technical term) of glowing, ionized hydrogen gas. Its intense emissions are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the center known as Melotte 15. It is accompanied by a distinctive pillar -- sometimes called "The Giraffe" by certain southern hemisphere astronomers known for spotting animal-like structures in deep space objects. The lower structure, IC 1795, is often called the Fish Head Nebula and is ~6,000 light-years away. Next, if you look carefully in the nebulosity above the Heart you'll see a small blue ring. I thought it might be an artifact in my data, but it has a distinctive ring shape that is particularly strong in the Hydrogen-alpha and Oxygen-III channels. Turns out to be WeBo-1 which was discovered only in 1995. It is a thin-ring planetary nebula surrounding a young barium star. Pretty cool, no? Now, look to the right of that and just above the long whispy "arm" is the open cluster IC 1824. Speaking of that long whispy arm, it goes by the snappy name of IC 1831.
This is my second attempt at imaging the Heart Nebula. My first version was one of my very first images and it was awful. Just awful. It had many technical flaws and my limited processing skills resulted in an oxygen starved purple heart desperately in need of resuscitation. Naturally, it was nominated for "Top Pick" here on AstroBin
. What were they thinking?
This is my attempt at rehabilitation.
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