In between projects with my widefield setup and OSC camera, I have been continuing to try to find something interesting to image with my 5 inch Mak/Newt and QHY5III462C OSC/NIR camera.  I found SH2-106 to be interesting, in theory, because of the high density of young stellar objects (YSO) and other types of stars close by.  But even with my f6 telescope and small camera, this is still a small object.  Oddly, many of the YSO that I would come back for are still invisible to me in the NIR and visible, so... 

This is my very feeble attempt to do a narrow band-like presentation.  This is something that I have no experience at all, so I apologize before hand!  Note, that is not the only issue with these images.  This camera has a very tight full depth and I am not used to processing with such data in a manner that wants much more from the subject.  Also, the 5 incher,  with somewhat misaligned optics is just not up to the task for such a small object.  At least in trying to get detail that would have made this for a more interesting image.  Also, the collimation issues is obvious in the rainbow effects in the brighter stars (something that a Mak/Newt is normally well corrected for.)  I am about to close a deal on a 12 inch photographic Newtonian soon here and it is with that scope that I hope to get much better resolution as well as seeing much deeper for my IR hopes.

This is false color presentation, because I wanted to fold the IR data (longer than 950 nm and probably no more than 1100 nm) into an image along with the OSC data I collected the day before with the same camera.  For anyone interested, I combined the split R, G, & B channels from the OSC image along with my very best subs used as a luminance channel that I processed for improved detail.  In the final image, I combined the luminance-improved RGB channels as follows: R + (0.5)G to make a "Yellow" channel, and then (0.5)G + B to make a "Cyan" channel.  These two were then combined with a separately processed IR image.  Not knowing how to do this in PixInsight, or any other software for that matter, I did a channel combine putting the IR data into the R, the Yellow into the G and the Cyan into the B.  I tried a lot of different things to get to the final image.  Bottom line, if you see something as strong red, it certainly represents an IR component in the nebula.  Even other areas, where the other bands are strong, there is IR components.  Finally, some stars are almost only exclusively visible in the NIR and these show up as very red.  Yes there are many stars that emit in NIR, so many have some red component.  Stars are black body emitters after all.  My experience is that only white dwarfs completely disappear when I try to see them with my setup which cuts below 950 nm.  

Sh2-106 is a bipolar "emission" nebula, driven by a hot young massive star.  Two polar lobes are being collimated to some extent by a large dense cloud girdle.  This star is not visible because of the dust, either via visible or NIR.  And the whole area lights up in the far IR as well, so not sure the star can be discriminated optically through so much dust.  I cannot find any information that clearly states that this hot star is itself a YSO.  However, it is likely massive, and such massive stars do not spend much time in their youth, so it is unlikely that we are so lucky to have caught this star as a YSO.  Either way, this "emission" nebula emits in many ways other than what narrow band imagers would define as emission.  The whole thing including areas less distinct around the lobes emit from visible through the NIR and longer wavelengths.  And the NIR intensity in the band I am working in certainly rivals the visible bands.  Consider that black body emissions around 1,000 nm suggest temperatures of these structures in excess of 1,000 degrees C. (I may be off a bit as my recall at this age fails me often, but generally below 2,500C.)  It therefore likely very much outshines even the Ha, OII, etc.  I include here in the revisions a mono image of the IR data.  The sub lengths were the same as for the visible.

I have tried a mouse over with the reconstituted LRGB visible image, but since I have reds in the visible as well as choosing red for the IR data, it really only shows off the very obvious areas that are strongly different between vis and IR.  If I could map more colors, I might be able to do something else, but as you are well aware by now, I am way out of my league in such endeavors!