Heart and Soul

I had ankle surgery mid-November. In the weeks leading up to the surgery, I took every opportunity to gather imaging data that I could work on during recovery. Not only did I hope that this would keep me occupied, but that it would give me a chance to hone my processing skills a bit.

I think it’s been a success, overall. I feel like I am getting better at the nuances of astroimage processing, but I know I that I still have a lot more to learn. This hobby and the tools it uses have evolved significantly over the past 15+ years.

I also have a lot to learn about the Dwarf 3. There are many features I haven’t tried, yet, and others that I need more practice on. One of the things I learned during my recent imaging marathon was that the scope is perfectly capable of taking good 60-second exposures. Until that realization, I was primarily shooting 15-second exposures. Longer exposures reveal fainter details and reduce image noise.

The Heart Nebula (IC 1805) and the Soul Nebula (IC 1848) are located near one another in the sky in the constellation Cassiopeia. Both are about 7,500 light years away. I’ve attempted to image both with one of my older rigs, but the camera was not up to the task. The Dwarf 3’s camera, however, is well suited for taking pictures of these types of nebulae.

The bright region in the upper-right of the image is called the Fish Head Nebula. It is a little closer to us, at only 6,000 light years.

I purposely showed the Soul Nebula slightly off-center to give a sense of how close it is to the Heart Nebula, the outer edge of which is faintly visible in the upper-right corner of the image. Maybe next year I will do a mosaic of the entire region that will properly show both nebulae side-by-side.