The Soul Nebula

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Pete
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The Soul Nebula

Unread post by Pete »

Monday, 14 Nov 2022

The moon’s down and the sky is amazing. Bortle 3 bordering on Bortle 2! It’s 38°F and the air is still. So there’s no moisture in the air, resulting in fantastic transparency and seeing is perfect.

With the demise of DST it’s wonderfully dark very early and I’m out setting up by 17:30. Tonight’s focus is upon IC 1848 – the Soul Nebula. Guiding with the 80mm Orion long tube and imaging with the 102mm triplet. Guide 9 slewing is dead on as far as coordinates are concerned. But images posted on the web show that my capture is incomplete. (More on this later). At 150’ X 75’ this is a relatively large object, and it takes 15 or 20 minutes to position for an optimum FOV.
IC 1848 s.jpg
IC 1848 s.jpg (963.93 KiB) Viewed 258 times
IC 1848 – the Soul Nebula 17:56 – 20:00 hrs, 14 Nov 2022
82 X 3 min, unbinned, 120 g, -15C cooling, 1 sec guide rate
Explore Scientific 102mm Essential Triplet with ASI2600MC-P camera & Optolong LP-P filter

Again, this is about average quality when stacked against online images. Somehow or other some of the web images show areas of blue nebulosity that I can never seem to attain. Probably a benefit of LRGB vs OSC.

In at 22:13. It’s down to 29F.

Actually I was in and out on this one. Dressed for winter and trying to acclimate. Cheated a bit and while I had to step out and nudge the dome a bit every ½ hour once set up and running the computer monitoring was performed from within the house using Windows Remote Desktop.

Can’t recall the last time I captured photons for 4 hours straight – possibly the time I did astrometry on a 20.3 mag asteroid. Couldn’t get diddly-squat processing this one in ImagesPlus, but fortunately at the end of the night I also saved a copy of the stretched SharpCap display, and that’s what I’ve got here, after processing just a wee bit with star size reduction in IP and Neat Image noise reduction in PhotoShop.

Don’t know how I’m going to print this one as cropping the camera’s 8.5” X 12.7”wide field image to fit an 8 ½” X 11” format destroys the picture no matter how you crop it.

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IC 1848 (Westerhout 5) is an emission nebula about 7,000 light-years distant in the constellation Cassiopeia. It forms a famous pair known as the Heart and Soul with the neighboring Heart Nebula (IC 1805). The Heart Nebula actually does have a valentine heart shape so this neighboring nebulosity was probably named after the song Heart and Soul. Which is almost a shame, as it looks like familiar objects. The Soul Nebula is sometimes also known as the Embryo Nebula, or more whimsically, the Teddy Bear Nebula. IC 1848 is actually the designation used for the open star cluster embedded within the nebula.

The Soul Nebula is being carved out by the stellar winds from the stars embedded within it, a process that leaves behind large pillars of material pointing inwards. These pillars are very dense and have stars forming at their tips.

About 300 light years across, this vast star-forming region is illuminated by the light of the young stars surrounded by star-forming clouds of dust and gas. The Heart and Soul are separated by only 2.5 degrees and physically connected by a bridge of gas. The stars in the region are less than a few million years old and are only beginning their life. For comparison, our Sun has been around for almost 5 billion years.
Pete P.
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menardre
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Re: The Soul Nebula

Unread post by menardre »

Pete

I think you did a great job with this nebula. Star are nice and pin-point, and you certainly captured the 'reds' and the details.

Like you said, this is a very large nebula. I tried to image with a 130mm refractor and could only capture a part of the nebula. Your image looks much more inclusive.

Well done!
Roger
Roger M.
Celestron CPC1100 EDGE, Stellarvue 130T refractor dual mounted on iOptron CEM120 on permanent pier mounted in Observatory. Imaging camera ZWO ASI2600 OSC, guide camera Lodestar or ZWO ASI290MM.
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