Last night, I escaped the light pollution by driving to the countryside to see thousands of stars. Looking to the Northeast, here’s what I could see naked eye. The constellation Cassiopeia stood out with its distinctive W of bright stars. These patterns of bright stars like the big dipper in ursa major or the W in Cassiopeia are called asterisms. Let’s zoom in on the asterism. Here I took a long exposure with my camera and 85mm lens, you can now see a number of star clusters and nebulae around the big W. Let’s zoom in further right into the Heart of the Heart Nebula. This is now a photo I took through a telescope and special narrowband filters. This is definitely one of the most spectacular deep sky objects for amateur astrophotographers in the Northern Hemisphere. We call it Melotte 15 or the Heart of the Heart Nebula, and now you know how to find it in the night sky.
