A faint, dark cloud within the Kh15 complex of the Cepheus-Cassiopeia void. This nebula was an incredibly challenging target to capture.

As with most obscure dark nebulae, there is essentially no information available. The best thing I could find was a 2000 distance estimate of approx. 590 ly from a paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics: Low mass clouds in the Cepheus-Cassiopeia void. I. Khavtassi 15. The nebula has a quite interesting apparent structure, with its smooth contours and the faint stream of dust emanating out to the right. The splotch of nebulosity below the main region does not resolve very well in the image, but evidence from DSS2 suggests it has a tailed-structure reminiscent of a cometary globule.

I did not have a reference image for this beyond a noisy DSS2 image, so figuring out what was detail and what wasn't was tough. An artifact from this process is left in the image as a blue glowing region to the left of the main nebulous region. This splotch of brightness may be an image artifact, but if it is such an artifact, it is a type I can clean up without aggressive settings just fine in all other cases. This case is different. After cranking the dark anomaly filter up to what seemed like a gazillion and letting my computer run for almost four hours on the one process, I was left with negligible change. Could it be a real feature? It is hard to tell, as the DSS reference makes it unclear if this feature really exists or not.

This is the first image of this object to appear on AstroBin. Aside from a mislabeled image that indicates it contains this object but really is more than 15 degrees of declination off, this also appears to be the first time this target has been imaged in detail by an amateur. My image had lots of troubles. I page the Imms, Delsaerts, and others in this community who are good with absorption clouds to help uncover the mysteries and beauty of this nebula.

Cheers & CS,

Lilith