Sh2-225 (also known as LBN 778) is a faint emission nebula and H II region located in the constellation Auriga. It is situated within the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. The nebula is estimated to be approximately 12,060 light-years (3,700 parsecs) away from Earth.
I found this to be a fascinating area. There are large bulges of Hii in the background. They are partially obscured by foreground dust. A bright patch of Hii is lit up in the middle. That bright bit is Sh2-225.
Often described as extremely faint, it appears near the more prominent supernova remnant Sh2-224 (the “Rice Hat” nebula). Some deep imaging suggests it may be part of a larger ring-like or ball-shaped structure obscured by dark nebulosity. Due to its low surface brightness, it is a difficult target for astrophotography.
Sh2-126, also known as the Great Lacerta Nebula, is a large red emission nebula located in the constellation Lacerta. It is part of the massive star-forming region Lacerta OB1, approximately 1,200 light-years from Earth. The nebula’s glowing hydrogen gas is ionized by the intense ultraviolet radiation from the bright, blue star 10 Lacertae.
A unique feature is a “stellar funnel” in the center. It appears greyish in this image as it reflects light from nearby stars. It is part of the LBN 437 molecular cloud. Another striking feature is a bright reflection nebula associated with the young star V375 Lacertae, which also produces Herbig-Haro objects.
APT managed and controlled my imaging sessions. It helped acquire 148 300s subframes. This amounts to a touch over 12 hours of exposure during our few clear nights in October. PixInsight was used to calibrate, debayer, integrate, and process to its natural color.
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.
NGC 6229 is a globular cluster located in the constellation Hercules. NGC 6229 is located at about 100,000 light years away from Earth. It is an intermediate-metallicity globular cluster. It has two distinct generations of stars. It may be the remnant core of a spheroidal dwarf galaxy.
NGC 3718 is also known as ARP 214. It is a distorted spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It is located about 59 Million Light Years away. Its distorted form is due to gravitational interaction with the other galaxy seen in this image, NGC 3729. This interaction happened at some point in the distant past. These are all part of a group of galaxies known as the Ursa Major Cluster.
One interesting footnote – below NGC 3718 you can see a small grouping of elongated shapes, very close together. While not shown very well in my image, this is a small group of 5 galaxies known as Hickson 56. These Galaxies are estimated to be about 400 Million Light Years away!
Messier 41 (also known as M 41 or NGC 2287) is an open star cluster in the constellation Canis Major. It is sometimes called the Little Beehive Cluster. It slightly resembles a smaller version of the regular Beehive Cluster, M 44. It was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654 and was perhaps known to Aristotle about 325 BC. It lies about four degrees almost exactly south of Sirius (the brightest star in the sky). Together, it forms a roughly equilateral triangle with Nu2 Canis Majoris to the west. All three figure in the same field in binoculars.
The cluster covers an area about the size of the full moon. It contains about 100 stars, including several red giants the brightest of which has spectral type K3, apparent magnitude 6.3 and is near the center, and some white dwarfs. The cluster is estimated to be moving away from us at 23.3 km/s. The diameter of the cluster is 25–26 light-years. It is estimated to be 190 million years old. Cluster properties and dynamics suggest a total life expectancy of 500 million years for this cluster. It will have disintegrated by then.
Sh2-290 (also known as Abell 31 or PK 219+31.1) is an ancient planetary nebula in the constellation of Cancer. It is estimated to be about 2,000 light years away.
Although it is one of the largest planetary nebulae in the sky, it is not very bright. The central star of the planetary nebula is a white dwarf with a spectral type of DAO. A planetary nebula is created when a low-mass star blows off its outer layers at the end of its life. The white dwarf is the dead remains of a star that existed but had died leaving behind Sh2-290. This is exactly what is expected of our star when it runs out of fuel in about 5 billion years.
Sh2-290 is made mostly of hydrogen and oxygen gas. The red gas signifies hydrogen gas, and the greenish hues signify the oxygen gas. The nebula has a bright central region being most of the nebula and a red ring around this blue/green region. The nebula, due to its ancient age, has its gas being dispersed into the interstellar medium.
This image was captured over five nights in January 2025. The image consists of 192 exposures, each lasting 5 minutes. These were taken with an f/8 RC8 telescope at 1626mm fl. An asi071MC color camera, cooled to 15f, was used atop a Skywatcher Eq6r pro mount. Image acquisition using Astro Photography Tool (APT) and processed manually in PixInsight.
Although it was included in the Sharpless Catalogue of Hii regions, it is actually a very dim planetary nebula. It is located at a distance of 711 light years from the Solar System in the constellation, Cassiopeia. Based upon its expansion rate it is thought to be about 7500 years old.
Planetary nebulae are formed when a star dies of “old age” and expels ionized shells of gas. The nebula is nearly circular in shape. It is much brighter to the southeast (lower right) because the central star is moving rapidly in that direction. Faint wisps of gas can also be seen in the opposite direction.
Planetary nebulae are usually symmetrical in shape, but that isn’t the case of Sh2-188. The Shrimp Nebula is believed to travel through space at an incredible rate. It moves about 300,000 miles per hour. It is also going through layers of the interstellar medium. This impacts the shape of the nebula and makes it asymmetrical. The bright part of the nebula is the bow shock. It occurs as a fast-moving planetary nebula interacts with the interstellar medium.
The Shrimp Nebula is not bright enough to be seen with the naked eye or binoculars. Its small size doesn’t help either. It is also very difficult to see with a telescope. This is particularly true if you are not observing from a very dark site far from light pollution. For imaging, a long focal length telescope on an equatorial mount is very helpful. And then a lot of exposure is required to bring out this dim PN.
APT is controlling the imaging sessions. This image represents about 20 hours of exposure. It uses a GSO RC8 at 1625mm fl and a ZWO ASI071MC camera. The setup is atop a Skywatcher EQ6r Pro mount. The Antlia quad-band light pollution filter was used in my bortle 4 sky.
Stewart Sharpless of the U.S. Naval Observatory published his catalog of 313 HII regions in 1959. This image contains 5 of them.
Sh2-257 is a bright nebula in the star formation region Sh2-254 to Sh2-258. This region is part of the GEM OB1 molecular cloud. It is located on the border of the constellations Orion and Gemini.
SH2-255 is the small bright one to the right. Left of that in the middle is SH2-257, and SH2-254 is the largest. The two smaller ones are SH2-256 and SH2-258. Not much here for a wider field of view but the larger telescope can define the structure very well.
SH2-112 is also known as LBN 337. It is a diffuse emission nebula located about 5,600 light-years away. It resides in the constellation of Cygnus. Specifically it’s the bright, circular region near the center. But, it’s clear that this is just one small part of a much larger cloud of gas. It just happens to be heavily radiated and so glows much more brightly.
The circular region of HII with dark dust rifts can be seen on the western side. I find that it loosely resembles a cross between the Pacman and Rosette nebulae.
I imaged this using an Antlia broad-band light pollution filter. I connected an ASI071MC OSC camera to a RC8 telescope. The telescope was riding an EQ6r Pro mount. This image consists of 314 180s subframes, or 16.5 hours of exposure.
It is located in a portion of the Orion Spiral Arm that is noted for areas of rich star formation. It does not seem to have an NGC entry, nor does it have a common name that I could find. I have found quite a few sample images of this target on Astrobin. However, it is clearly not well-known in the astro-imaging circles.
