SH2-232 (Sharpless 232 )

This nebula is a nice sized nebula for those with about 90 by 60 arc minutes of a field of view because you also capture SH2-235 seen on the upper right of SH2-232. Also in the image are two planetary nebulae, one which is fairly bright just to the right of SH2-235. The other, which is fainter, is found in the middle of SH2-232 just above a bright star. Megastar star atlas lists this planetary at 18th magnitude. SH2-235 is very bright, but you will need to put in a lot of time for SH2-232 because it is rather faint. Both respond very well to the hydrogen-alpha filter, which is the best filter to use on this one. I used more color for this one to colorize the nebula. I tried an OIII filter on this to see if SH2-235 had any hope, but there was very little that picked up and none in SH2-232. The faint nebula you see at the very top is part of SH2-231, so with a wide enough field of view, you can capture all three.

For a complete list of the Sharpless Catalog visit my main site at http://www.sharplesscatalog.com

Images by Dean Salman