Heart and Soul

Sunday's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the Heart and Soul nebulae. It is another image wonderfully processed by Davide De Martin of SkyFactory.org from data obtained via the Digitized Sky Survey.

The image above began with Palomar's 48-inch Samuel Oschin Schmidt Telescope. Images were made as a part of the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey on 14-inch glass photographic plates. Each photo was originally a black-and-white image with either a red, blue or near-infrared sensitive film. The plates were scanned by the Space Telescope Science Institute and made available online for astronomers and others.

Davide has consistently done fantastic work in processing images. In this case he "worked with data coming from 8 different photographic plates taken at Palomar Observatory between 1989 and 1993. " The image above shows a large area of the sky 6.1 x 4.5 degrees.

Be sure to check out SkyFactory.org for more great images.