This object is a combination of bright, dark, and reflection nebulae located about 1500 light years away in the constellation of Cepheus at a declination of +68 degrees.
I have annotated a few small interesting objects in Revision F. Herbig-Haro object HH 215 is just above and left of the image center. The object appears as a white fan about 0.5 light years long, similar to a comet, emanating from the tiny white dot which is the variable protostar PV Cephei. This newborn star is firing out jets of gas in opposite directions, although in my image the bottom side is obscured by the dark nebula. The object is similar in behavior to Hubble's Variable Nebula and changes shape dramatically over short periods of time. It most often appears as a fan shape, although in my image from 2019 (see link below) it is seen as a bright long arc. The object was discovered in 1977 by Armen Gyulbudaghian, an Armenian astronomer. Some papers also refer to this outflow as HH 315.
Most interesting to me in this image is the cometary nebula GM 3-12. This small bright nebula on the right side of the image is coming from the young stellar object IRAS 20359+6745.
This 2.3 hour image is first light for my new RASA 11 setup (11” aperture, 620mm focal length, f/2.2), shown
here. A good comparison to this RASA result is
this refractor image of the same object. The refractor image was taken with my Tak85 refractor (3.3” aperture, 455mm focal length, f/5.4) for 5 hours integration total. Thanks to all of who who provided encouragement for attempting a RASA setup, particularly
@Göran Nilsson.
It will be interesting to see which setup is more challenging and more fun - this fast RASA 11 setup or my long focal length C11 EdgeHD setup. Both have their benefits and drawbacks. I am satisfied with this first result from a fast RASA setup, but I have work remaining to tweak and improve it.
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