Cave Nebula
The Cave Nebula is known as Sharpless 155 and as Caldwell C9. It is a dim area of nebulosity near Cepheus maybe 4 degrees away from M52 and the Bubble Nebula. The "cave" is the bright red/blue object just above center, and I think the cave part comes from the dark area just above. The small blue reflection nebula on the lower left is LNB524.
HAS member Kenneth "Drako" Drake offered the following, which is reproduced here with his permission: "The field is swamped with nebulosity and dark clouds. I cannot say that I have ever seen the Cave Nebula but I found a reference to the Wolf's Cave (LDN1218 & Bernes 44). In your image, the huge dark complex takes up the upper left corner while the denser small area surrounded by SH2-155 seems to be YDM56. The large hook shaped dark cloud below and left appears to be Bernes 43 - also known as LDN 1215-16. At the left side of your image are many small dark clouds and Harbig Haro objects clustered together. Fine image there Dick." (Thanks Kenneth!)
Image: Combination of approximately 16 images from night of 11/19/2006 and 33 images from night of 11/20/2006. All exposures were 4 minutes. Totals: 49x4 = 196 minutes or 3 hours 16 minutes. My current image processing workflow is here. This one was a challenge to process as it had a lot of interesting colors just about everywhere.
Equipment: Canon EOS 20Da (unmodified), Takahashi TOA 130 (a 5" APO refractor) with reducer, guided with SBIG STV, Losmandy G-11 mount.
Copyright © 2006 by Dick Locke. All Rights Reserved.
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