Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm F.L.)  Captured at 3.5 arcsec/pixel.  Shown resampled to 16.8 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon 6nm Filters

Acquisition Data

10/5/2008 to 10/12/2008 Chino Valley... with CCDAutoPilot3

Exposure

Hα  390 min.  (13 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Click here for a color version
Click here for a narrow band color mapped version.

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions and Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject & combine.

PhotoShop for non-linear stretching.

North is to the top.

The large emission nebula, dubbed IC 1805, looks much like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element, hydrogen. The glow and the larger shape are all created by a small group of stars near the nebula's center. A close up spanning about 30 light years contains many of these stars. This open cluster of stars contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, many dim stars only a fraction of the mass of our Sun, and an absent microquasar that was expelled millions of years ago. The Heart Nebula is located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia.

Source: NASA APOD