This is the busiest cosmic landscape that I have photographed so far. There are so many objects visible in this field, starting from the two Messier clusters M46 and M47, and following with the open clusters NGC 2423, NGC 2425, NGC 2414 and Ruprecht 26. In one of these clusters is present the exoplanet NGC 2423-3 b (not visible here, obviously). Two planetary nebulae PK 231+4.2 and PK 231+4.2 add to the list. Just wanting to look, there would be another object, the proto planetary nebula Calabash Nebula OH 231.84 +4.22, whose position is indicated in the annotated image, that is not clearly visible in this image here, that I plan to image with a longer focal (will be tiny in any case!) [see 2024 update below].

The picture was taken in the clear but windy night of 27 March 2023. Fortunately my refractor, used for this image, is not as sensitive to the wind as my Newton, and, after discarding generously the worst sub-exposures, here is the image. I drizzled the image x 2 to correct the under-sampling of my configuration.

Update: in January 2024 I imaged with a longer focal the M46 area, and managed there to capture the faint and tiny Calabash Nebula.

M 46
Messier 46, also known as NGC 2437, is an open cluster of stars in the southern constellation of Puppis. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1771. It is about 5000 light-years away. There are an estimated 500 stars in the cluster with a combined mass of 453 M☉, and it is thought to be 250 million years old.

NGC 2438 PK 231+4.2
NGC 2438 is a planetary nebula. Parallax measurements by Gaia put the central star at a distance of roughly 1370 light years. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 19, 1786. NGC 2438 appears to lie within the cluster M46, but it is most likely unrelated since it does not share the cluster's radial velocity.
The nebula consists of material ejected from the central star during the asymptotic giant branch stage, beginning some 8,500 years ago. The central star of this planetary nebula is a 17.7-magnitude white dwarf, with surface temperature of about 74700 °C. It is one of the hottest stars known.

Calabash Nebula OH 231.84 +4.22 (see Hubble/ESA picture below)
The Calabash Nebula, also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula or by its technical name OH 231.84 +4.22, is a proto-planetary nebula (PPN) 1.4 light years long and located some 5000 light years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. The Calabash is almost certainly a member of the open cluster Messier 46, as it has the same distance, radial velocity, and proper motion. The central star is QX Puppis, a binary composed of a very cool Mira variable and an A-type main-sequence star.
Astronomers believe that 1000 years from now, the Calabash Nebula will become a fully developed planetary nebula.

PK 231+4.1
I have not found much info about this PN. Simbad indicates a distance of 4433 pc (14450 ly), that seems a lot for a visible planetary nebula, but is just my layman feeling.

M 47
Messier 47 or NGC 2422 is an open cluster. It was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654 and in his then keynote work re-discovered by Charles Messier on 1771. It was also independently discovered by Caroline Herschel.
There is no cluster in the position indicated by Messier, which he expressed in terms of its right ascension and declination with respect to the star 2 Puppis. However, if the signs (+ and −) he wrote are swapped, the position matches. Until this equivalency was found, M47 was considered a lost Messier Object. This identification only came in 1959 due to the work of the Canadian astronomer T. F. Morris.
M47 is about 1600 light-years away and is about 78 million years old. There are around 500 members, the brightest being HD 60855, visible in our picture, a magnitude 5.7 Be star. The cluster is dominated by hot class B main sequence and giant stars, but a noticeable color contrast comes from its brightest red giants.
Its optical neighbor M 46 is much older and much further away.

NGC 2423
NGC 2423 is an open cluster discovered by William Herschel in 1786.
NGC 2423 is about 766 pc (2500 ly) from the solar system and the latest estimates give an age of 736 million years. The apparent size of the cluster is 12.0 minutes of arc, which, given the distance, gives a maximum true size of about 8.8 light-years.

Exoplanet NGC 2423-3 b
NGC 2423-3 is a red giant star part of the NGC 2423 open cluster (hence the name NGC 2423-3). The star has a mass of 2.4 times the Sun. As of 2007, it has been confirmed that an extrasolar planet orbits the star.
NGC 2423-3 b is an exoplanet 10.6 times more massive than Jupiter, even more massive than Pi Mensae b, which has mass about 10.3 times Jupiter. Only the minimum mass is known since the orbital inclination is not known, so it is likely to be a brown dwarf instead. The planet orbital time is taking 1.956 years.
This planet was discovered by Chad Lovis and Michel Mayor in July 2007.

NGC 2425
NGC 2425 is an open cluster discovered by Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel in 1793. Simbad reports distance estimates ranging from 2700 to 3900 pc (8100 - 12700 ly).

Ruprecht 26
Simbad indicates a distance of 3350 ly.
More information on Ruprecht catalog is available here https://www.stellar-journeys.org/cluster-ruprecht-tour.htm

NGC 2414
NGC 2414 is a very young open cluster discovered by William Herschel in 1785.
It is about 3455 pc (11300 ly) from the solar system and the latest estimates give an age of 9.5 million years. The apparent size of the cluster is 6.0 minutes of arc, which, given the distance, gives a maximum true size of about 20 light-years.

(Object descriptions and the picture below are mostly excerpted from Wikipedia)


Picture: The Calabash Nebula is a spectacular example of the death of a low-mass star like the Sun. This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the star going through a rapid transformation from a red giant to a planetary nebula, always a misnomer as accurately considered a starburst nebula, during which it blows its outer layers of gas and dust out into the surrounding space. The recently ejected material is spat out in opposite directions with immense speed — the gas shown in yellow is moving close to a million kilometers an hour. Astronomers rarely capture a star in this phase of its evolution because it occurs within the blink of an eye — in astronomical terms.  The nebula is also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula because it contains a lot of sulfur, an element that, when combined with other elements, smells like a rotten egg.