Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  IC 1795  ·  IC 1805  ·  IC 1831  ·  IC 1848  ·  IC 1871  ·  NGC 1027  ·  NGC 896
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The Heart and Soul Nebulae, SavannahCarl
The Heart and Soul Nebulae
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The Heart and Soul Nebulae

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The Heart and Soul Nebulae, SavannahCarl
The Heart and Soul Nebulae
Powered byPixInsight

The Heart and Soul Nebulae

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Description

Deep within the heart of the Heart Nebula lie a group of young stars whose combined energy lights up nearby hydrogen gas. Similarly, the Soul Nebula is energized by several small open star clusters embedded within.

The nebulae are physically connected by a bridge of gas barely visible in my picture. The stars in the region are less than a few million years old, just toddlers in stellar time. In comparison, the Sun has been shining for about 5 billion years.

These structures are so huge I had to image them with my smallest telescope, just 275 mm. That’s no bigger than a moderate telephoto lens on a camera. I had to carefully rotate the camera in order to get both objects inside the frame, but it was a tight fit!

The Heart and Soul are faint. It took nearly six hours of exposure time over two nights to capture this image.

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The Heart and Soul Nebulae, SavannahCarl