This beautiful emission nebula in Cepheus is also known as Sharpless 2-162, and resembles a Stromgren Sphere such as the Trifid nebula, but with a hollow center. It is not a planetary nebula or Wolf Rayet Bubble, and most catalogs list it simply as a bright nebula. Megastar lists it as a Class E IF1 r1 nebula. Although quite diffuse, the background nebula is 16x6 arcmins in size. This object is faint, and difficult to photograph satisfactorily. To produce the image above, the luminance image was taken through the red filter to bring up the nebulosity, therfore this image is technically a RRGB image.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG ST7E w/Enhanced Cooling
Exposure:  RRGB = 60:20:20:36 (RGB Binned 2x2)
Filters:  RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing 8/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  21 C
CCD Temperature:  -20 C
Processing:  Maxim DL, Photoshop, PW Pro.