| Description: | The Soul Nebula, AKA Westerhout-5, Sharpless 2-199 or LBN667, is a big star forming region in the constellation of Cassiopeia. W5 is a radio source within this nebula. But this image only shows part of it, a interesting piece about the apparent size of the full moon, while the complete nebula complex spans about four full moons. Its distance is estimated at 7500 light years. Another big star forming region located in Cassiopeia is the Heart Nebula, and together they are popular targets for astrophotographers, since they will fit in one image with wide field optics.
In this image, red shows glowing hydrogen gas, but there are also some blueish reflection nebulae visible as well as a few dark dust clouds. Total integration time was 4.2 hours with a 0.4m reflector equipped with a cooled CCD camera, through RGB and Luminance filters. |
