This is my new picture of Melotte 15, at the heart of the Heart Nebula IC1805. It lies some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. This is an emission nebula showing glowing gas and darker dust lanes. The nebula’s intense output and its configuration are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula’s center. This open cluster of stars contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of our Sun’s mass. The cluster used to contain a microquasar that was expelled millions of years ago.
For this picture I was planning a few nights to gather enough data for the narrowband HST colour palette. However a limited number of frames looks to be enough to show some of the details and colours.
Setup:
Telescope: Astrosib RC250 @ f/6 f=1500mm
Camera: QHY9
Mount: Mesumount 2
Guiding: OAG with Lodestar
Exposure: 5x20min SII (R) + 7x20min Ha (G) + 5x20min O3 (B)
Date: October 7th, 2013
Location: Overijse, Belgium
Bart Delsaert - Astrophotography 