Sharpless 2-129 & Outters 4, Cepheus

In the constellation Cepheus lies a very faint pair of nebula, the H-alpha dominated Flying Bat Nebula (Sharpless 2-129),and the extremely faint Oxygen III dominated Squid Nebula (Outters 4). (red = H-alpha, teal = OIII). The image was shot entirely through narrowband filters; the H-alpha taken from light-polluted Maryland, while the Oxygen III frames were taken both in Maryland and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, where the skies are considerably darker. The Squid Nebula is a bi-polar nebula, and was only discovered in 2011 by Nicolas Outters. The image is a composite of 22 hours of exposure, combining data taken over the course of two seasons. The faint squid nebula was extremely difficult to capture, and to bring out in the processing.