When I discovered that I could capture 4 Sharpless objects, an open star cluster, and a portion of the Heart Nebula in the same image, I was pretty excited about such a prospect. But alas, the resulting image is not nearly as exciting as I had hoped it would be.
This image is taken just 1 degree northeast of the Heart Nebula, just a bit north of the Soul Nebula. The 4 Sharpless objects are all circular and small, ranging in distance from 8,000 to 10,000 light years away. Sh2-196 is by far the largest of these 4, being 6 arc-minutes and 20 light years in diameter.
The open star cluster at lower right, NGC 1027, is a bit closer at 4000 light years away.
Hiding up in the right corner is another small circular red emission nebula. Unfortunately, at only 1 arc-minute in diameter, it is not large enough to make the Sharpless catalogue even though it is brighter in surface brightness than anything else in the region.
Stewart Sharpless created the Sharpless catalog of HII regions (emission nebulae) in 1959. The list is intended to be comprehensive north of declination −27°. The catalog prefix is Sh2 because this list of 313 objects is his second catalog version. My
Sh2 Collection is about 2/3 complete.
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