Date Posted: 1/30/2024
Date Taken: 9/4/2016, 9/5/2016
Scope: Planewave CDK 12.5 f/8, 2541mm
Camera: SBIG STL-11000 with Astrodon Tru-Balance E-Series Gen2 filters
Temp: -15C
Mount: Losmandy Titan
Guiding: SSAG, Celestron 80mm guide scope, 600mm.
Exposure: LRGB 155:75:60:70 All subs 5min. Luminance unbinned, RGB binned 2x2.

Calibrated and Stacked with CCDStack2; RGB combine and DDP with MaximDL. Processed with CS4.

The Heart Nebula, catalogued as IC 1805, is a large nebula complex spanning 2 degrees in the sky. It is about 7,500 light years away in Cassiopeia. This is a close-up of the center of the center portion of the nebula, showing Melotte 15, an open cluster consisting of several massive stars nearly 50 times the mass of our sun, and many more dim stars that are much smaller than our sun. The stellar winds and radiation from the large stars are responsible for sculpting the dense nebula at the center of this image. Melotte 15 is estimated to be about 1.5 million years old.