This image captures a series of objects located in the constellation of Camelopardalis at a declination of +59 degrees. The image is a 2 frame mosaic.
The large red emission nebula is Sh2-202. It is believed to be ionized by the cluster near the center, Stock 23. This cluster is somewhat in the shape of a miniature Hercules Keystone. This is a magnitude 5.6 cluster of about 40 stars located 1200 light years away. It is sometimes called Pazmino's cluster, after John Pazmino wrote about it in Sky and Telescope in the late 70's. This cluster was surprisingly not included in any of the major object catalogs.
The two reflection nebula on the left side are vdB 14 (top, illuminated by star HD 21291) and vdB 15 (bottom, illuminated by star HD 21389). These nebulae are about twice as far away as the emission region, at a distance of 2600 light years. The two blue refection nebulae have a pinkish cast, presumably from emission in the vicinity, and they each span about 20 light years.
My favorite part of the image is the lovely, swirling dark nebula to the right of vdB 15. I am very surprised that this object does not have a dark nebula designation like those less spectacular dark nebula which are seen just above it.
Again, I am a bit embarrassed to show you my previous image of this object with 3.5x the integration time, but many of you seem to enjoy seeing these comparative images, so
here it is.
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