Sharpless 2-159 is an emission nebula that straddles the border between the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus. Measuring only about 7 arcminutes in diameter, it’s most often seen as a small background object in images of the Bubble and Lobster Claw nebulae. The upper right corner of this image is in fact the tip of the Lobster Claw. Most of the visible nebulosity from Sh2-159 is hydrogen alpha emission, but my RGB filters did pick up some broadband emission that appears orange in the image.
On the right side of the image is a patch of dark nebulosity illuminated by a bright star designated MWC 1080. I did not find a catalog name for the reflection nebula, but there are plenty of references to MWC 1080 in the literature, and it has been identified as a Herbig-Haro object. MWC 1080 is a young, intrinsically bright Herbig Be star that is surrounded by several faint companions that were not resolved by my puny refractor. Herbig Ae/Be stars are young stars that have not yet started fusing hydrogen into helium, and therefore can be considered "pre-main sequence" stars. They are typically surrounded by clouds of dust (HH objects). The dusty nebula and its central, bright star remind me somewhat of the Iris Nebula, but on a smaller, less colorful scale. MWC 1080 seems like a great target for a larger aperture telescope.
For further information about MWC 1080 and its surrounding dust, you may enjoy reading from the two sources below.
1) CFHT's ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE WEEK: 23 October, 2000. “Inside the hourglass: a young massive star reveals its hatchlings.”
https://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/Science/Astros/Imageofweek/ciw231000.html2) Kim, I. J., Oh, H., Jeong, W. S., Seon, K. I., Pyo, T. S., & Lee, J. J. (2021). High-resolution Near-infrared Spectroscopy of Diffuse Sources around MWC 1080. The Astronomical Journal, 162(1), 24.
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