Cepheus – Semper Iuvenis Photography

Discovering a Squid within a Flying Bat Nebula

The Sh2-129 nebula, also known as the “Flying Bat Nebula,” is a large and faint emission nebula. It consists of ionized hydrogen gas. This nebula is located in the constellation Cepheus, approximately 2,300 light-years from Earth. It is notable for containing the much fainter, blue-green “Squid Nebula” (Ou4) within its boundaries.

The attraction of this image is of course the Squid (Ou4) within the Flying Bat. The bat nebula spans 50 light-years across. Imaging it requires a very wide field telescope. I do not keep such a telescope set up on my rigs. I went with the widest I have mounted and that’s the Esprit 120ED at 860mm fl. Not an easy target with a OSC camera. Certainly a lot more time will help bring out the squid. Perhaps next year as Cepheus is on the back end of its time over us. Meridian is at 17:30 now.

Capturing an image of Sh2-129, especially the faint Ou4 within it, is considered a challenging target for Astro photographers. It typically requires long exposure times. Many hours, often 30+ hours, are needed using narrowband filters. These filters isolate the specific hydrogen-alpha and oxygen-III emissions that reveal its detailed structure. This image is 11 hours using a broadband filter. More in 2026.

141 subframes at 300s acquired using APT for session management and automation. Esprit 120ED & ASI2600MC cooled to 15f atop an Eq6r Pro mount. Subframes calibrated, aligned, integrated, and processed manually in PixInsight. Astrobin link for the details.

I look forward to spending more time on this one. Stay tuned!

Sh2-158 Northern Lagoon Nebula

SH2-158 is also known as the Northern Lagoon Nebula or NGC 7538. It is an active star-forming H II region in the constellation Cepheus. This nebula is located about 9,100 light-years away. It is home to massive young stars and protostars. It includes one exceptionally large O-type protostar. It is part of the Cassiopeia OB2 complex in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way.

Sh2-158 is often overlooked by amateur astrophotographers due to its proximity to the larger and more famous Bubble Nebula. However, it is a challenging and rewarding target. I was intrigued by the name alone. I have imaged the Lagoon Nebula and hadn’t heard of the Northern Lagoon Nebula. A quick search led to a few examples but not many, so I set my sights on the target.

Sh2-158 is an active star-forming region embedded within a large molecular cloud. As an emission nebula, Sh2-158 glows. However, its light is spread out over a large area. This distribution makes its surface brightness very low. Long total exposure times are needed. Often, multiple hours are required to gather enough light. These times help distinguish the nebula from the sky’s background noise. The surrounding dust clouds absorb and scatter light, further diminishing the nebula’s brightness and obscuring fine details within it. This makes revealing the nebula’s structure challenging and requires advanced processing techniques. The dust also causes reddening, altering the color balance of images and requiring careful calibration during post-processing.

Image acquisition details in astrobin image

I imaged it over the course of three nights in Sept 2025. I used a RC8 telescope at 1625 mm paired with an AI071MC camera atop an Eq6r Pro mount. I used a Radian Ultra Quadband filter.

Discovering the clouds of LBN 552 in Cepheus

LBN 552 is an object listed in the Lynds’ Catalogue of Bright Nebulae. This catalogue, compiled by Beverly T. Lynds, lists various bright nebulae observed throughout the night sky.

LBN 552 is an extensive molecular cloud complex. It is very faint and located in the constellation Cepheus, about 600 light-years from earth. It is known for being one of the dimmest objects in the Lynds Bright Nebula catalog. It is often imaged together with the dark nebula LDN 1228. The pair are sometimes informally called the “Fighting Dragons“. It’s essentially a cloud of dust reflecting the light of nearby stars.

LBN 552 is classified as a “bright” nebula in the Lynds catalog. However, in practice, it is very faint. It is challenging to observe or image due to its diffuse nature. It contains a mixture of diffuse dark and light nebulosity. Most images of this cloud complex I’ve seen were bought from a service. Others were imaged from a remote hosting site. Very few taken from a backyard with a personal telescope.

This image is a touch over 11 hrs of exposure acquired from my driveway using APT running on a NUC. Esprit 120ED telescope f/7 at 640mm paired with the ASI 2600MC camera atop a Skywatcher Eq6r Pro mount. Processed manually using PixInsight. All of the acquisition detail here in the astrobin version.

The Lion Nebula

Sharpless 2-132, the Lion Nebula, is a very faint emission type nebula on the Cepheus/Lacerta border.

It is estimated to be about 10,000 to 12,000 light years away, but this is no more than an estimate.

This image consists of 16 hours of exposure from a ZWO ASI071MC OSC camera at -6c. Z73 440mm telescope riding a Skywatcher EQ6r Pro mount. Processed in PixInsight, sharpened and converted to jpg in Photoshop.

Night after night I would shoot this for a few hours with only a faint hint of a bright spot on the screen. Once I had 20 hours of data I began the processing journey. All calibrated, cosmetic correction, debayered, subframe selector weeded out about 4 hours of data that just wasn’t up to par. Weightings assigned, top 20 images identified, all frames registered to the best weighted frame, master reference image created from best 20, all frames reregistered to master reference frame, L_Norm reference frame generated, L_norm ran against all frames, finally image integration was run using calibrated, corrected, debayered, registered, lights & L_norm.

I was very pleasantly surprised when I got my first glimpse of this image. Just a little post processing required.

As winter continues more targets will be available to shoot. Sign up below to be notified of additions. Cheers!

Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant’s Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the east of IC 1396A.

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.

The combined action of the light from the massive star ionizing and compressing the rim of the cloud, and the wind from the young stars shifting gas from the center outward lead to very high compression in the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula. This pressure has triggered the current generation of protostars.

Very happy to have captured this piece of our night sky from Burke County, NC. A very peaceful night here in the hills of the blue Ridge. Any questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you.