Mount: iOptron CEM25

Heart and Soul Nebulae

Cassiopeia is the constellation where the “heart and soul” of our galaxy can be found. Nebulae IC 1802 and IC 1848 are relatively nicknamed Heart and Soul after their heart and embryo-like shapes. Spanned over 300 light-years, it takes about 6000 years for photons from these bright emission nebulae to reach the Earth. Their bright red light is mostly emitted by energized hydrogen. The region itself contain quite a lot of star clusters as the centers of these nebulae give birth to a lot of young stars. The vanishing line in the middle of these two nebulae is actually...

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Pleiades

Pleiades are an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. The cluster is dominated by hot blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. A faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster, but is now likely an unrelated foreground dust cloud in the interstellar medium, through which the stars are currently...

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