The Heart Nebula (also known as the Running dog nebula, IC 1805, Sharpless 2-190) is an

emission nebula An emission nebula is a nebula formed of ionized gases that emit light of various wavelengths. The most common source of ionization is high-energy ultraviolet photons emitted from a nearby hot star. Among the several different types of emissio ...

, 7500

light years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

away from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

and located in the

Perseus Arm The Perseus Arm is one of two major spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy. The second major arm is called the Scutum–Centaurus Arm. The Perseus Arm begins from the distal end of the long Milky Way central bar. Previously thought to be 13,000 lig ...

of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by

William Herschel Frederick William Herschel (; german: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline ...

on 3 November 1787. It displays glowing ionized

hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic ...

gas and darker

dust lane A dust lane consists of a relatively dense, obscuring clouds of interstellar dust, observed as a dark swath against the background of a brighter object(s), especially a galaxy. These dust lanes can usually be seen in spiral galaxies, such as ...

s. The brightest part of the nebula (a knot at its western edge) is separately classified as NGC 896, because it was the first part of the nebula to be discovered. The nebula's intense

red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...

output and its morphology are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula's center. This

open cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, an ...

of stars, known as Collinder 26 or Melotte 15, contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of the Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of the Sun's mass. The Heart Nebula is also made up of ionised oxygen and sulfur gasses, responsible for the rich blue and orange colours seen in narrowband images. The shape of the nebula is driven by stellar winds from the hot stars in its core. The nebula also spans almost 2 degrees in the sky, covering an area four times that of the diameter of the full moon.

Gallery

File:Heart Nebula.jpg, HeartNebulaDec2022

File:Heart Nebula Hubble Palette.jpg, Heart Nebula captured in Ha, Sii and Oiii Hubble Palette File:Heart-nebula.jpg, Heart Nebula captured on an ASI2600mc-pro with a Triad Narrowband Filter File:PerseusChimneymap.png, Heart Nebula and Soul Nebula are part of a large chimney cloud complex File:Melotte15.jpg, Melotte 15 is part of Heart Nebula. There are several bright stars here, some of them nearly 50 times mass of the Sun. Telescope: 14" SCT Imager: Raman Madhira from Ray's Astrophotography Observatory; Postprocessing with PixInsight. Imaged on 2022-09-21 File:Heart-nebula-sept-2022.png, alt=Captured from Manchester September 2022 Bortle class 8 sky , Captured from Manchester September 2022 Bortle class 8 sky

References

External links

Heart Nebula Data download & Processing Guide
* {{Sky, 02, 33, 00, +, 61, 27, 00, 7500 NGC objects Cassiopeia (constellation) H II regions Perseus Arm Sharpless objects IC objects Discoveries by William Herschel

Gallery

See also

References

External links