Heart and Soul

[Whistlin Bob]

Finally had a chance to catch up with some processing this weekend.

Firstly- here’s a widefield shot including the Soul nebula and the Double Cluster from 4^th December. This is taken from the best 70% of two hours of data using vintage 135mm Russian lens on a 600d and Star Adventurer, with the usual set of calibration frames.

 

Next up here’s a Ha and Oiii from 1^st December on the Heart. This is from 14x10 mins of Oiii and 30x 10 minutes of Ha. I should have done them the other way around as the Ha is a stronger signal, but I had the Oiii in to start with. I’ve used an “HOO” palette for this- feeding the Ha into the Red and then the Oiii into both Blue and Green, with the Blue favoured for no other reason than that I quite like the purplish hue it gives.

I’ve enjoyed messing about with the Starnet++ programme lately- so here’s a starless version:

Finally, I think at times I’m guilty of getting too involved with the process of putting these images together and losing track of the incredible size and structure of these objects and the miracle of being able to take pictures of the them from my back garden. So here’s a crop of Melotte 15, the Open Cluster at the “Heart of the Heart”. Our estimate is that this nebula is 7,000 light years distant from Earth and has a diameter of 107 light years across. Using the pixel scale (1 light year=23 pixels) I’ve done a (very) rough approximation of our Stellar Neighbourhood around the nebula structure in the middle of the cluster. What would our night sky look like if we had this in the middle of it? Would it have changed our biology, our myths, our history? For sure, it’d make for some pretty cool photos…

 

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by Whistlin Bob
Typo and pixel scale

[Mr Spock]

Nice set of images. I like to see the double cluster included. Great bit of the sky.

[mackiedlm]

These are really nice. I've been playing with Starnet++ too but can't really make my mind up about it. 

I love your Melotte 15 thing. Your right it's easy to forget the sizes and distances involved when you are staring at the computer screen for hours