The Heart Nebula is a massive nebula in the Perseus arm of the milky way, visible from our vantage point on Earth within the Cassiopeia constellation. Within the frame of this image, towering columns of gas light-years wide birth new stars, while incredible physics sculpt complex shapes from stardust.
Through a telescope, the central star cluster is bright and easily visibile, but the burning gas surrounding it is really only visible in photographs. Due to the abundance of Hydrogen, this region looks primarily red in true-color photos, but by isolating the emissions of specific gasses and remapping them for greater color separation, incredible details surface. This image was processed with a proprietary variation of the famous "Hubble Palette" to reveal greater color depth and detail than historic images of the same region of space. This was captured using an 8" telescope from my backyard in Sacramento, and the product of many hours worth of exposures.
The title of this piece refers to the formation of new stars, but there is also a dead star in the image. Known as a planetary nebula, this relatively tiny object shows a star shedding its outer material into space. If you look closely you can find it.
