About Image:

Melotte 15 is a vibrant, young open star cluster located about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. Situated at the center of the famous Heart Nebula (IC 1805), its massive, hot blue supergiant stars blast intense stellar winds that sculpt the surrounding gas into spectacular, glowing cosmic pillars.The cluster consists of several massive stars reaching up to 50 times the mass of our Sun, mixed with numerous fainter stars. On a cosmic timescale, Melotte 15 is extremely young—only about 1.5 million years old.The energetic radiation from this small group of stars ionizes the surrounding hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur, painting the region in the stunning, rich red, green, and blue hues typically seen in narrowband astrophotography

Equipment & Details:

Optics: Orion 8” inch 3.9f Newtonian astrograph with 2" MPCC Mark III coma corrector

Camera: Canon 60D DSLR unmoddified

Mount: Celestron AVX

Guiding: Orion starshoot autoguider 60mm guide scope

Date: October 19,21,-2023

Location: Clarksdale Missouri

Exposures: Lights-197 with 4-minutes subs, total 13 hours 8 minutes

Processing: Pixlnsight, Photoshop CS5