Heart Nebula (IC 1805) | Astrophotography Print

Seven thousand five hundred light-years away, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, a vast cloud of glowing hydrogen gas has been slowly sculpting itself into the shape of a heart for millions of years. This is IC 1805 the Heart Nebula, and this is our photograph of it.

We captured this image in February 2025 from our stargazing hub in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire. Dalby Forest is a Milky Way class Dark Sky Discovery Site, one of the darkest locations in the UK, and is home to the darkest skies in the entire North York Moors. Dalby Forest at night is a magical place, bitterly cold, with frost settling on every surface in the courtyard around our hub, but utterly peaceful. The silence broken only by the calls of owls and the sound of a nearby stream. It is the kind of place that reminds you why we do this.

This was the first time we had been able to use our 8" Celestron RASA telescope with its full complement of accessories, paired with our ZWO ASI294MC Pro dedicated astrophotography camera, an Optolong L-Pro light pollution filter, and our SkyWatcher EQ8-R mount. The results immediately surpassed everything we had previously achieved on this target with our refractor telescope, and in considerably less time. The RASA 8's fast focal ratio pulls in faint nebula detail with remarkable efficiency, and seeing the Heart Nebula rendered with this level of clarity and colour depth for the first time was a genuinely exciting moment.

The total exposure is made up of 54 individual frames of 180 seconds each — around 2 hours and 42 minutes of total integration time. At the heart of the nebula (quite literally) you can see Melotte 15, the young star cluster whose intense radiation ionises the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to glow with that deep, vivid crimson. The dark dust lanes threading through the image are clouds of gas and dust that have not yet been swept away — regions where new stars may one day form.

Printed on premium fine art paper with professional inks, every detail — from the delicate filaments of glowing gas to the countless stars of the Milky Way behind — is preserved with gallery-quality clarity.

• All prints available in A4, A3, and A2
• A4 prints supplied with a 12" × 16" card mount (black or white)
• A3 prints supplied with a 20" × 16" card mount (black or white)
• A2 prints supplied unmounted
• All photographic print orders are printed and hand-mounted to order
• All photographic print orders shipped in specialist protective art packaging