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North is to the top.
Sharpless 115 stands
just north and west of Deneb, the alpha star of the constellation
Cygnus, the Swan. Noted in the 1959 catalog by astronomer Stewart
Sharpless (as Sh2-115) the emission nebula lies along the edge of
one of the outer Milky Way's giant molecular clouds, about 7,500
light-years away. Hot stars in star cluster Berkeley 90 power the
nebular glow. The cluster stars are likely only 100 million years
old or so and are still embedded in Sharpless 115.
Source:
NASA APOD
The small bight
object, near the top, is Abell 71. The nebula is also cataloged as
PK 085+04.1, PN G084.9+04.4 and Sh 2-116. Initially cataloged as a
planetary nebula, the object is now recognized as an HII region.
The
image uses the Hubble Palette. The SII data are
mapped to the red channel, the Ha to the green and the 0II data are
mapped to the blue channel. The color channels were stretched
to similar levels to show the areas for the three
elements.
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