The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, Sharpless 2-190, lies some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by William Herschel on 3 November 1787. It is an emission nebula showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes.
The brightest part of the nebula (a knot at its western edge) is separately classified as NGC 896, because it was the first part of the nebula to be discovered. The nebula's intense red output and its morphology are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula's center. This open cluster of stars, known as Collinder 26 or Melotte 15, 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 above images is made up of 16 subframes 10 minutes each (2 2/3 hours) stacked and processed in AstroArt 7 and tweaked using Photoshop 5. The subframes were captured using a AT6RC scope mounted on an AP900 mount with a Starlight Express SXVR-M25C. The AP900 was autoguided using a Meade DSI Pro camera and an 80mm f7 refractor scope. The image data was captured while at Rusty's RV Ranch near Rodeo, AZ in October of 2020.
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