This object is an emission nebula located 7000 light years away in the constellation of Orion at a declination of +21 degrees. The nebula is ionized mainly by the magnitude 7.6 star HD 42088, the brightest star near the center of the blue region in the image.

The nebula has a number of interesting star clusters and emission structures, with narrow dark dust lanes sprinkled about. Some of the dust lanes flow from top left to lower right across the brightest portion of the nebula. Toward the bottom right of the image are a collection of dust pillars silhouetted against the glowing gas, all pointing back to the nearby star cluster. At several places in the nebula, bright whitish patches of glowing gas are illuminated by nearby stars.

This is a SHO narrowband palette with RGB stars added.  Like most large emission nebula, OIII is the dominant signal in the inner region of the nebula while HII (and to some extent SII) dominates the outer region. If you would like to see other examples of this, see my full narrowband emission nebulae collection here.  The image is a significant crop because of the relatively small size of the object (40 arc-minutes) relative to the large size of the sensor (3.3 degrees wide). 

There is confusion over the designation of this object. Most sources assign either assign NGC 2174 to the nebula or assign NGC 2175 to the central star cluster, both of which are incorrect. The nebula in diameter, is NGC 2175 -  one of the few instances where an object like this is designated based on the nebula and not the central star cluster (OCL 476).  NGC 2174 is the small star cluster and emission knot, about 3 arc-minutes in diameter, at the 2 o'clock location from the center of the main nebula, just on the outside edge of the blue central region.  Astrobin does not quite show these designations correctly on the mouseover.

The nickname of this beautiful object is the Monkey Head Nebula, which is unfortunate. Instead of marveling at the beauty of this wondrous object, I find myself twisting my head around to find the orientation of the monkey head.