IC 1848 / SOUL NEBULA / WESTERHOUT 5Having had the opportunity to give the
Heart Nebula a go two years ago, I thought I'd try imaging the Soul Nebula, this time with my new cooled camera. The square FOV didn't quite cover the whole nebula at 360mm, so I opted to do a two-panel mosaic. Later, my 10-year-old daughter pointed out that it would have fit just fine if I'd rotated the camera 45 degrees... Oh.
I managed to snag just under 4 hours per panel over two nights and then was socked in by cloud in December. I had a quick opportunity to grab an hour of RGB stars for each panel just before Christmas, and then clouds for months! I decided to process what I had, and the result is a combination of HOO and Foraxx with RGB stars. I've cropped the target as though it were shot on regular 2:3 chip, but I might post the full 2-panel mosaic as a revision.
The designation IC 1848 actually refers to the star cluster in the centre of the Soul Nebula, itself known as Westerhout 5. Denser areas of gas in this region have compressed to form stars, the radiation and stellar winds from these stars push gas into forming new regions of greater density, which in turn forms more new stars, and this process is believed to have been happening for many generations of stars at this point. The characteristic pillars on the edges of the nebula pointing inwards are areas of greater density, the less dense areas having been eroded by ultraviolet light from IC 1848. They are approximately 10 light years tall, and have stars forming at their tips!
REFERENCE:Soul Nebula - NASA JPL, April 5, 2010.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia13014-soul-nebula 
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