This rich starfield spans almost 10 degrees across the sky toward the northern constellations Cassiopeia and Perseus. On the left, heart-shaped cosmic cloud IC 1805 and IC 1848 are also known as the Heart and Soul nebulae. They are emission nebulas showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes. On the right of the image are star clusters NGC 869 and NGC 884 also known as the Double Cluster.
Heart and Soul, with their own embedded clusters of young stars a million or so years old, are each over 200 light-years across and 6-7 thousand light-years away. They are part of a large, active star forming complex sprawling along the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. The Double Cluster is located at about the same distance as the Heart and Soul nebulae. Separated by only a few hundred light-years, NGC 869 and NGC 884 are close to eachother, and both clusters are estimated to be about 13 million years old. Their proximity and similar stellar ages suggest both clusters are likely a product of the same star-forming region.
In this large field of view you can also see two galaxies between the two double objects.
Maffei I is a large elliptical galaxy, at about 3 million light-years’ distance and Maffei II is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 10 million light-years away. They were believed to be a member of the Local Group of galaxies, but it is now known to belong to its own group, the IC 342/Maffei Group.
INSTRUMENT Canon EF 70-200mm F/2.8 II
CAMERA Canon EOS 60Da
MOUNT Vixen Sphinx
GUIDING Lacerta MGen Autoguider
EXPOSURE TIME 174x5min iso 800
LOCATION Kékestető, Zselici Csillagpark
