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  • Writer's pictureAmir

Center of the Heart Nebula

Located within the Constellation of Cassiopeia, the Heart Nebula is one of my favorite objects in the sky to photograph. It's simply a stunning collection of gas and dust sculpted by stellar winds of new stars.

My capture above was taken with the Hubble palette which consisted of using Ha, SII and OIII filters. At the center right is the very core of the Heart Nebula, also called Melotte 15. A small collection of new stars which are partly responsible for the shape of this nebula. The length of the nebula in this photo is roughly 50 light years, and the nebula is 2700 lights years from Earth.

A total of 22.5 hours of exposure (mostly HA) over 5 nights. More stats below:


Skywatcher Esprit 120ED Super APO Triplet ZWO ASI1600mm-Cool Orion Atlas EQ-G Guiding telescopes: Orion ST80 Guiding cameras :ZWO ASI224MC Software: Adobe Photoshop 2020 , PixInsight 1.8 , DeepSkyStacker (DSS) Deek Sky Stacker 4.2.0, Starnet++ Chroma SHO 1.25" mounted Sesto Senso 2 Electronic Focuser

Chroma HA 3nm - 191x300 Chroma OIII 3nm - 29x300 Chroma SII 3nm - 52x300


Finally, for the nerds, a video below which shows all the frames in sequence



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