Melotte 15 in HS-HSO with RGB stars (Nicola Beltraminelli)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas) · Contains: HD15557 · HD15558 · HD15570 · HD15629 · HD15851 · IC 1805 · LBN 654 · LDN 1366 · LDN 1367 · LDN 1368 · LDN 1369 · LDN 1372 · LDN 1373 · Sh2-190

Image of the day 10/31/2023

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Melotte 15 in HS-HSO with RGB stars

Image of the day 10/31/2023

Powered byPixInsight

Melotte 15 in HS-HSO with RGB stars

Melotte-15 is the star cluster at the heart of the Heart Nebula. It is an OB association of very young hot blue supergiant stars that is only 1.5 million years old. Fierce stellar winds from this cluster have blown the enormous bubble within the parent HII nebula that is the heart nebula. The winds have also sculpted the dust clouds within which other stars are forming into interesting columns and shapes, analogous to the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula (from Sky & Telescope 2014).

I have to say that I did literally fall in love with the Heart nebula and its very peculiar star cluster. I initially immortalized this wonderful deepsky object with my SVX80T refractor, which enabled me to capture the entire nebula. Now I wanted to specifically focus on the dust clouds at its heart to unveil their fantastic complexity. As usual, I took many subs with Ha, SII and OIII narrowband filters and for the Ha channel I retained only the ones with the highest sharpness. During the processing step I decided to combine the Ha (70%) and SII (30%) signals for the luminance channel. This enabled me to slightly enhance the details of the nebula. I hesitated to increase the global lightness of the nebula, but this was at the expense of the central dust clouds, therefore I decided to keep the picture as it is.

As always don't hesitate to provide your input on the image.

CS,

Nicola

Original
Final
B

B

Description: A bit more light on the dark regions initially originated from the highly contrasted SII layer

Uploaded: ...

Sharpless2 Objects
Duo-band, Tri-band, and Quad-band Imaging
ASI 6200 MM Pro
Processed with Photoshop
Astrophotographes (France)
Fine Art Astrophotography
Narrowband imaging

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8616264
PixInsight job	TK3Q2YC1H92TAHRSGKGBRNNUF13ZBUOY
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	02h34m49s.984
RA (top/left)	02h39m15s.267
RA (top/right)	02h31m59s.326
RA (bottom/right)	02h30m26s.957
RA (bottom/left)	02h37m35s.810

Dec (center)	+61°22′16″.89
Dec (top/left)	+61°30′40″.61
Dec (top/right)	+61°48′04″.45
Dec (bottom/right)	+61°13′21″.40
Dec (bottom/left)	+60°56′17″.64

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Image of the day 10/31/2023

Melotte 15 in HS-HSO with RGB stars

Image of the day 10/31/2023

Melotte 15 in HS-HSO with RGB stars

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Image of the day 10/31/2023

Melotte 15 in HS-HSO with RGB stars

Image of the day 10/31/2023

Melotte 15 in HS-HSO with RGB stars

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