The Heart Nebula Goes HDR. Pulsating With Cosmic Hotness.

Enlarge. | Via.

This is the Heart Nebula, and it throws with the cosmos eternal. Oh yeah, and it’s also sort of/really goddamn sexy like most nebula. All nebula. Yep.

NASA:

What powers the Heart Nebula? The large  emission nebula  dubbed  IC 1805  looks, in whole, like a  human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element:  hydrogen. The red glow and the larger shape are all created by a small group of stars near the  nebula’s center. A close up in  high dynamic range  (HDR) spanning about 30  light years  contains many of these stars is  shown above. This  open cluster  of stars contains a few  bright stars  nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, many dim stars only a fraction of the mass of our Sun, and an  absent microquasar  that was expelled millions of years ago. The  Heart Nebula  is located about 7,500  light years  away toward the  constellation  of  Cassiopeia.

Fantastic stuff.