Here we have Westerhout 5, containing the star-cluster IC1848, also known as The Soul of Cassiopeia. It is about 6,500 light-years from dear, old Earth, in (logically) the constellation Cassiopeia. If you unfocus just a bit, you can see what appears to be the outline of an in-utero baby, with its face up and back down, thus the name. It is just below the “Heart of Cassiopeia from the Heart, providing further reason for the name.
As is common with these fluorescing nebulae, the visible glow results from the intense UV radiation emitted from newly born stars that recently emerged from the molecular clouds, as the solar wind of the young stars pushes against the surrounding molecular nebulae (clouds), compressing them and creating the conditions for the birth of yet another generation of stars. As also is the norm, the black areas around the fluorescing nebula are not deep space but rather dark, thick clouds (dark nebulae) between us and the core of our Milky Way galaxy.
This was the second image I captured at the Eldorado Star Party in October of this year (2023(. It is in visual, red, green, and blue, with ten 300-second exposures through luminous, hydrogen-alpha, red, green, and blue filters, for a total integration time of 8 hours and 20 minutes, using a ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro camera, ZWO filter wheel and filters, ZWO off-axis guider with an ASI120 mini guide camera, and an ASCAR 107PHQ scope with a 0.7 reducer creating a focal Length of about 520mm, mounted on a ZWO AM5 harmonic equatorial mount. I processed the data using Astro Pixel Processor v. 2.0.0 beta 13 and Adobe Lightroom Classic.