This beautiful and rarely imaged object makes me think of an interstellar base (or a Dyson Sphere?!) viewed by a space traveler directed there to restore after a long galactic travel.
In reality is a young stellar nursery hosting an infrared star cluster still enveloped into its original dark nebula. Its distance from us is estimated to be 1440 parsecs +/- 260 (approximately 4500 light years).
Not so much documented information for the layman is available, a good source is galaxymap.org, from which is excerpted the info following here.
Sh 2-187Galactic Coordinates: (126.66°, -0.8°)
This young (100-200 thousand years) star formation region is most likely ionized by a B0 class star and is surrounded by a 4600 solar mass molecular cloud. It is partially obscured by the Lynds dark nebula LDN 1317 and contains the infrared star cluster [BDS2003] 52.
Russeil lists three potential ionising stars, one with a B2.5V class.
Sources:
Potential ionising stars. [1]
Associated with the dark nebula LDN 1317. [2]
100-200 thousand years old star formation region most likely ionised by a B0 star, surrounded by a 4600 solar mass molecular cloud. [3]
Contains [BDS2003] 52. [4]
1. ^ Russeil, D., Adami, C., & Georgelin, Y. M. (2007). "Revised distances of Northern HII regions", Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 470, 161-171. [2007A&A...470..161R]
2. ^ Zavagno, A., Deharveng, L., & Caplan, J. (1994). "A new young stellar object in the S 187 complex: Photometry and spectroscopy", Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 281, 491-504. [1994A&A...281..491Z]
3. ^ Joncas, G., Durand, D., & Roger, R. S. (1992). "The Sharpless 187 gas complex - A multifrequency study", The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 387, 591-611. [1992ApJ...387..591J]
4. ^ Bica, E., Dutra, C. M., Soares, J., et al. (2003). "New infrared star clusters in the Northern and Equatorial Milky Way with 2MASS", Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 404, 223-232. [2003A&A...404..223B]
Distance estimates
1000 pc [2001AJ....122..313J]
[2007A&A...470..161R]
Source:
http://galaxymap.org/cat/view/sharpless/187
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