The Heart & Soul Nebulae

This is my biggest imaging project so far, I never worked with this much data before. It’s a mosaic of my recent captures of the Heart and Soul Nebulae, combined with even more data from 2024. All in all, this is a stack of 317 subs of 300s, adding up to a total exposure time of 26hrs and 25min.

Processing wasn’t easy - different kinds of multiband filters were involved, gradients overlayed each sub-stack, adding up to merge artifacts in the final mosaic. Besides that, the resolution is enormous, leading to longer processing times. I spent about 2hrs for the stacking and additional 3hrs for processing and development.

I’m still undecided wether I like the vertical orientation more, so here it is for you to decide: