Last night I took a few bananas, a quad band filter and pointed the scope at the Monkey Head. After 30 minutes I noticed that the nebula has much changed in shape and that it has lost brightness within just a few days. As I was about to call the IAU (the folks who raped Pluto), I figured it wasn't the Monkey but the visually nearby Lower's Nebula, Sh2-261, which is way fainter. Having already captured 30 minutes I just continued although this is not an object for a planetary OSC, especially not under my sky. The show ended after about three hours with clouds closing the curtain. The most reliable feature of AP are clouds, they always come back without a whistle. Obviously, this object requires way more exposure under a transparent, calm and dark sky. In view of the short cloud break it may have been wiser to use an IR-Cut instead of a Quad-band filter.

There isn't much written about Sh2-261, presumingly as it is often neglected. Though it has a beautiful appearance it is not catalogued in the NGC or IC. Anyway, Sh2-261 or LBN 863 is a faint magnitude 10 HII region and emission nebula about 3260 light-years (disputed) away in Orion's right arm spanning 43 light-years in space and some 50' of sky apparent. Among other stars, the 9th magnitude, spectral type O7.5V star HD 41997 (a high proper motion fugitive star at 4 o'clock position in the court of the nebula) ionizes the gas of the region, which means that the hydrogen atoms have lost their electrons due to the intense radiation from nearby stars. The nebula glows in red and pink colors as the electrons recombine with the protons and emit light. Embedded within Sh2-261 are LBN 862 and LBN 864 and several dark nebulae. Interestingly, the region is located at the outermost edge of the Milky Way, on the border of the galactic region between the Orion and Perseus arms.

This is as much as I found about the Monkey... eeeeh, the Lower's Nebula.