The Lynds Bright Nebulae (LBN) Catalogue was published by US astronomer Beverly Turner Lynds in 1965.  Most of the catalogue consists of faint gray clouds, often molecular clouds.  However, several LBN objects in Cygnus are a striking exception.  These objects, including LBN 380 (this object), LBN 325, LBN 331 and others, are sharp red HII arcs resembling SNR remnants.  I find these arcs to be beautiful but I have not been able to understand their origin.

As identified in the mouseover, this image captures a number of bright emission nebulae located in the constellation of Cygnus at a declination of +48 degrees, of which LBN 380 is the most interesting.  I could not find much information on these objects.

Besides LBN and LDN objects, there are several other interesting objects here:

- The bluish vdb 134 is in the upper right corner.  

- Just left of vdB 134 is the planetary nebula We 1-10 (PN G086.1+05.4), discovered by Weinberger in 1977.  This object is a faint, rarely imaged planetary nebula located 1400 light years away. The nebula spans 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view. This corresponds to a diameter of just over 1 light year, which is typical for a PN.   The outer edges of the nebula are blurred in some places, which I assume is due to ISM interaction. A faint central star may be the progenitor star.

- At the bottom of the image is Abell 71, also known as Sh2-116.  This small round object was first catalogued in 1955 by G.O. Abell as a planetary nebula.  Later, a paper by Pismis, Hasse and Quintero in 1991 identified this object as simply a region of HII gas. But I have imaged many circular regions of Ha gas, and none look like this nebula. The nebula has a fiant OIII signal.  The nebula has a bit of a spiral shape, similar to a galaxy, with arms seen at the top and bottom. Even more intriguing to me about this object is that I see a very, very faint bluish central star in my longer focal length image, at the exact center of the nebula. Examining the image in detail, I do not think this is an artifact or an accident. Because of the faint central star and a faint OIII signal, plus the unique "spiral" nature of this nebula, I think there is more to it than simply being an HII region. The object begs further study by experts to identify its morphology.

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Reminder – This object and 3100 more are included in the Imm Deep Sky Compendium, a free planning resource to help astrophotographers find interesting targets in their night sky.  Foreign language translations in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish, and Chinese are now available at the above link.