Wednesday night was a good night at the River Ridge Observatory. Crisp temperatures, no wind or dew, and clear steady skies. No technical difficulties either. My goal was to shoot the Heart and Soul Nebulas. Yes, that is their nicknames. Their official names are IC 1805 and IC 1848, respectively. Both are large emission nebulas, I suspect they are part of the same molecular cloud but I don’t know that for a fact. It’s kind of obvious why the one is the Heart Nebula while the other looks more like a fish to me, specifically a coelacanth, and what does a soul look like anyway? Or maybe a boot print in the snow.Both images were shot with my 11″ SCT with Hyperstar adapter to shoot at f/1.9 with the dual narrowband L-eNhance filter to select specific emission bands of light. 12 five minute images stacked together with flats and darks. Then virtually identical processing done in Photoshop.
