HEART AND SOUL NEBULAE
I captured this image over the past 3 nights and it consists of 160 four minute images (10.7 hours of exposure time). I processed this using two different color palettes. The upper image is the regular palette and the other one is a modified Hubble palette to enhance the Sulfur II (oranges) and Oxygen III (blues). I use a special narrow band filter during image capture to bring out the colors. The reds ar ionized hydrogen gas.
The Heart Nebula( right) is often imaged with IC 1848, which is known as the Soul Nebula (left). It’s also located in Cassiopeia and is 6,500 lightyears away or about 38,000,000,000,000,000 miles from Earth.
The Soul Nebula is a cloud of cosmic gas and dust 150 lightyears wide that’s being illuminated and carved by powerful streams of charged particles emanating from an open cluster of stars.Like the Heart Nebula, it too is an emission nebula.
The Heart and Soul Nebulae are both located in the Perseus arm of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and together stretch about 600 lightyears across.
Thanks so much for viewing and comments are always appreciated. As we say, Clear Skies!!
