Winter time brings some big emission nebulae to the night sky in North America. A recent favorite of mine is the Heart Nebula, also known as IC1805 or Sharpless 2-190. This nebula is absolutely massive. If you could see it with the naked eye, it would be about 9 times bigger than the full moon. Unfortunately it’s too dim to be detected by the unaided human eye. A camera can do the trick though. This image is about 6 1/2 hours of data, mathematically added together and manipulated to make what I think is a pretty picture.
