Melotte 15 - The Heart of the Heart Nebula (jimwgram)

Melotte 15 - The Heart of the Heart Nebula

This is a close-up of the open cluster Melotte 15 at the core of IC 1805 -- a zoomed in / cropped version of the full Heart Nebula captured in my previously uploaded image, with 21h 48m of Narrowband data captured over the course of 5 nights from 10/25 to 11/11 (Ha - 11h 9m, Oiii - 6h 30m, Sii - 4h 9m).

I always loved this region of Heart Nebula, where radiation and stellar winds from young, energetic stars seem to have opened a massive cavity in the heart of an area of emission nebula run through with dark dust lanes and billowing clouds of gas. Right at the center is Melotte 15, floating like a chain of islands in a pool of ionized oxygen.

My original project was focused on capturing this region in detail, but I liked the full image of Heart so much, that I decided to post it as well. Some more details of capture and processing can be found in my Heart Nebula image.

Original
Final
B

B

Description: Starless version of the "Heart of the Heart Nebula".

Uploaded: ...

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
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Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6686182
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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