Move your mouse over the image above (on smartphones or tablets: touch it) to get a version with constellation lines, deep-sky objects and labels drawn.
Cepheus, which lies in the Milky Way, contains rich starfields. Nearly all of the constellation is filled with nebulae, designated either LBN (for Lynds' catalog of Bright Nebulae) or LDN (for Lynds' catalog of Dark Nebulae) or vdB (for van den Bergh's catalogue of reflection nebulae) in the mouse-over image above. Two of them have common names: In the center of this field of view lies LDN 1235, the "Dark Shark Nebula"; closer to the bottom vdB 152, the "Wolf's Cave Nebula", is located.
About 1,000 light-years away and above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud which fills this image is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region, which consists of many star forming regions. Distant background galaxies can also be spotted in this region, for example PGC 67671 to the right (west) of the Dark Shark Nebula, visually buried behind the dusty clouds.
Cepheus Center - Wolf's Cave Nebula and Environment, CCD-image.
Exposure Data
