Author Topic: Star-Speckled Heart Nebula Glows Red in Lovely Deep-Space Photo  (Read 402 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Online Buster's Uncle

  • With community service, I
  • Ascend
  • *
  • Posts: 49547
  • €429
  • View Inventory
  • Send /Gift
  • Because there are times when people just need a cute puppy  Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur  A WONDERFUL concept, Unity - & a 1-way trip that cost 400 trillion & 40 yrs.  
  • AC2 is my instrument, my heart, as I play my song.
  • Planet tales writer Smilie Artist Custom Faction Modder AC2 Wiki contributor Downloads Contributor
    • View Profile
    • My Custom Factions
    • Awards
Star-Speckled Heart Nebula Glows Red in Lovely Deep-Space Photo
« on: November 05, 2017, 02:54:27 PM »
Star-Speckled Heart Nebula Glows Red in Lovely Deep-Space Photo
Space.com
by Miguel Claro, Space.com Contributor |  November 3, 2017 02:13pm ET



Heart Nebula IC 1805 captured by astrophotographer Miguel Claro from Cumeada Observatory, headquarters of Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal. Original Image Credit: Miguel Claro



Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical "Skyscapes" that connect both Earth and night sky. Join Miguel here as he takes us through his photograph, "Heart Nebula: When the Universe Falls in Love."


The beautiful Heart Nebula, also known as IC 1805, is a bright, red emission nebula with a shape that resembles a human heart.

This cosmic cloud glows red because it's filled with ionized hydrogen gas. Darker lanes of interstellar dust create a dark silhouette in the center of the luminous, heart-shaped outline.

Located about 7,500 light-years from Earth, the Heart Nebula resides in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation Cassiopeia. The brightest section, a fish-shaped knot at the cusp of the heart, was discovered before the rest of the Heart Nebula and is separately classified as NGC 896, or the Fishhead Nebula.

The nebula's red glow and peculiar shape are a result of intense radiation emanating from a small cluster of stars near the nebula's core. Known as Melotte 15, this cluster contains a few young, hot and bright-blue supergiant stars nearly 50 times the mass of our sun. These stars are only about 1.5 million years old. (For comparison, our sun is about 4.6 billion years old). Many more dim stars that are only a fraction of our sun's mass also reside in this cluster.

Stellar wind, or the stream of charged particles that flows outward from the newborn stars, has sculpted the shape of the Heart Nebula by pushing its clouds of dust and gas outward from the core.

To capture this image of the Heart Nebula, I used a Takahashi FSQ-106ED refractor telescope with an EM-200 auto-guided mount and a Canon EOS 60Da DSLR astrophotography camera. The camera was programmed to shoot with an ISO setting of 1600 and an exposure time of 210 seconds. The final composite combines 12 frames with a combined exposure time of 42 minutes. Image processing was completed with PixInsight 1.8 and Adobe Photoshop CS6.

The image was taken from the Cumeada Observatory at the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve in Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal.


https://amp.space.com/38657-heart-nebula-deep-space-photo.html

 

* User

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Select language:

* Community poll

SMAC v.4 SMAX v.2 (or previous versions)
-=-
24 (7%)
XP Compatibility patch
-=-
9 (2%)
Gog version for Windows
-=-
103 (32%)
Scient (unofficial) patch
-=-
40 (12%)
Kyrub's latest patch
-=-
14 (4%)
Yitzi's latest patch
-=-
89 (28%)
AC for Mac
-=-
3 (0%)
AC for Linux
-=-
6 (1%)
Gog version for Mac
-=-
10 (3%)
No patch
-=-
16 (5%)
Total Members Voted: 314
AC2 Wiki Logo
-click pic for wik-

* Random quote

To map the very stuff of life, to look into the genetic mirror and watch a million generations march past. That, friends, is both our curse and our proudest achievement. For it is in reaching to our beginnings that we begin to learn who we truly are.
~Academician Prokhor Zakharov 'Address to the Faculty'

* Select your theme

*
Templates: 5: index (default), PortaMx/Mainindex (default), PortaMx/Frames (default), Display (default), GenericControls (default).
Sub templates: 8: init, html_above, body_above, portamx_above, main, portamx_below, body_below, html_below.
Language files: 4: index+Modifications.english (default), TopicRating/.english (default), PortaMx/PortaMx.english (default), OharaYTEmbed.english (default).
Style sheets: 0: .
Files included: 45 - 1228KB. (show)
Queries used: 36.

[Show Queries]