The Sharpless Catalog

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Sh 2-111 Coordinates: (81.18°, -17.02°) Distance: Unknown [ See details ]
The appearance and direction of this object suggests a nearby dust cloud but there seems to be no significant references to Sh 2-111 in the scientific literature.
Sh 2-112 Coordinates: (83.78°, 3.28°) Distance: 1740 pc, Size: 7.6 pc Source: 1985A&AS...61..537L [ Find on map | See details ]
The exciting star for this nebula is the O8V class star BD+45 3216 (SAO 49801). The average distance of the stars associated with this nebula is 1740 pc.
Sh 2-113 Coordinates: (83.95°, -8.03°) Distance: 3800 pc, Size: 16.6 pc Source: 2003A&A...397..133R [ Find on map | See details ]
Sh 2-113 and Sh 2-114 form, respectively, the southern and northern portions of a filamentary circle that resembles a supernova remnant. However, no supernova remnant appears to be recorded for this location.
Sh 2-114 Coordinates: (84.20°, -7.88°) Distance: 4500 pc, Size: 26.2 pc Source: 2004BASI...32..335G [ Find on map | See details ]
Sh 2-113 and Sh 2-114 form, respectively, the southern and northern portions of a filamentary circle that resembles a supernova remnant. However, no supernova remnant appears to be recorded for this location. The distance reference for Sh 2-114 is incorrect and a correct one should be assigned.
Sh 2-115 Coordinates: (84.83°, 3.91°) Distance: 2300 pc, Size: 33.5 pc Source: 1981A&A...100...28F [ Find on map | See details ]
In the same direction as the radio source W71, this nebula is ionised by the O6 star LS III +46 12 which is part of the star cluster Berkeley 90 embedded in the nebula. The cloud surrounding Berkeley 90 (part of which is visible as Sh 2-115) contains 4400 solar masses of gas and dust and is about 30 pc long.
Sh 2-116 Coordinates: (85.00°, 4.50°) Distance: Unknown [ See details ]
Often described as the planetary nebula Abell 71, but a 1991 study concluded that this object is actually an HII region. The green glow next to it is probably a fault in the infrared photographic plate.
Sh 2-117 Coordinates: (85.49°, -1.00°) Distance: 800 pc, Size: 55.9 pc Source: 1982ApJS...49..183B [ Find on map | See details ]
This is the North American and Pelican nebula, which is visible through a gap in the Rift system of dusty giant molecular clouds that separates the Gould Belt from the Cygnus complex. Sh 2-117 appears to be ionised by the heavily obscured O5V star 2MASS J205551.25+435224.6. Only a small part of this large and relatively close nebula appears in this image. You can see a better image of this huge nebula here.
Sh 2-118 Coordinates: (87.49°, -8.92°) Distance: Unknown [ See details ]
Sh 2-118 is one of the largest nebulae in apparent size in the Sharpless catalog, but essentially nothing about it has been published in the scientific literature. Sh 2-113, Sh 2-114, Sh 2-118 and Sh 2-123 appear to be the brightest parts of a large hydrogen-alpha ridge that runs below the Cygnus complex.
Sh 2-119 Coordinates: (87.60°, -3.86°) Distance: 700 pc, Size: 32.6 pc Source: 1982ApJS...49..183B [ Find on map | See details ]
Sh 2-119 is located near the North American nebula (Sh 2-117, NGC 7000). Avedisova lists 6 ionising stars. The hottest of these is the O 7.5 III runaway star 68 Cygni (HD 203064), which was likely blasted out of the Cepheus OB2 association about 5.2 million years ago. It is also known as HS 240 = [GS55] 240. Good colour images of this nebula can be found here and here.
Sh 2-120 Coordinates: (90.22°, 2.04°) Distance: 6300 pc, Size: 1.8 pc Source: 2003A&A...397..133R [ Find on map | See details ]
A radio map of Sh 2-120 shows a shell-like structure around a central source. Very little information is available in the literature apart from this map. According to a 1978 study, Sh 2-120, Sh 2-121, Sh 2-127 and Sh 2-128 are all at about the same distance of 7500 parsecs and are "probably distant HII regions associated with a spiral feature more distant than the Perseus arm". Sh 2-120 appears behind the much closer dark nebula LDN 988, which has been informally called the Pincushion cloud.

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Stewart Sharpless published the second and final version of his famous nebula catalog in 1959. Although astronomers publish articles referring to the Sharpless nebulae almost every month, there seems to be few places on the Internet that bring together information on these nebulae as a whole - unlike, for example, the Messier catalog. This is most likely because the Messier objects are visible to anyone with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. Most of the Sharpless objects are clearly visible only in photographic plates taken by large telescopes. Fortunately some of these plates have now been digitally scanned and made publicly available.

Many of the brightest and most beautiful Milky Way star formation regions visible from the northern hemisphere are in the Sharpless catalog so the 313 objects it contains are well worth examining carefully. (In fact there are more than 313 objects as subsequent research has shown that some of the Sharpless nebulae consist of more than one object.) Although the Sharpless catalog is only intended to be complete for objects visible north of declination -27 degrees, a similar catalog covering the southern hemisphere was published by Alex Rodgers, Colin Campbell, and John Whiteoak in 1960, which is largely an expansion of Colin Gum's earlier catalog. You can visit a gallery of these RCW nebulae here. At least 50 objects in the Sharpless catalog are also in the RCW catalog and I have noted this in the descriptions of these objects.

These images were created using the POSS-II/UKSTU data of the Digitized Sky Survey and SuperCOSMOS using the process described here.

According to my correspondence with the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and the Space Telescope Science Institute, I am allowed to use the POSS-II/UKSTU data to create and display images for non-commercial purposes so long as I include this fine print for the SuperCOSMOS data:

Use of these images is courtesy of the UK Schmidt Telescope (copyright in which is owned by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the UK and the Anglo-Australian Telescope Board) and the Southern Sky Survey as created by the SuperCOSMOS measuring machine and are reproduced here with permission from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.

and this acknowledgement taken from the DSS site:

The Digitized Sky Surveys were produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under U.S. Government grant NAG W-2166. The images of these surveys are based on photographic data obtained using the Oschin Schmidt Telescope on Palomar Mountain and the UK Schmidt Telescope. The plates were processed into the present compressed digital form with the permission of these institutions.

The Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II) was made by the California Institute of Technology with funds from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Sloan Foundation, the Samuel Oschin Foundation, and the Eastman Kodak Corporation.

The UK Schmidt Telescope was operated by the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, with funding from the UK Science and Engineering Research Council (later the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council), until 1988 June, and thereafter by the Anglo-Australian Observatory. The blue plates of the southern Sky Atlas and its Equatorial Extension (together known as the SERC-J), as well as the Equatorial Red (ER), and the Second Epoch [red] Survey (SES) were all taken with the UK Schmidt.

The "Second Epoch Survey" of the southern sky was made by the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) with the UK Schmidt Telescope. Plates from this survey have been digitized and compressed by the ST ScI. The digitized images are copyright © 1993-5 by the Anglo-Australian Observatory Board, and are distributed herein by agreement.

The "Equatorial Red Atlas" of the southern sky was made with the UK Schmidt Telescope. Plates from this survey have been digitized and compressed by the ST ScI. The digitized images are copyright © 1992-5, jointly by the UK SERC/PPARC (Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, formerly Science and Engineering Research Council) and the Anglo-Australian Telescope Board, and are distributed herein by agreement.

The compressed files of the "Palomar Observatory - Space Telescope Science Institute Digital Sky Survey" of the northern sky, based on scans of the Second Palomar Sky Survey are copyright © 1993-1995 by the California Institute of Technology and are distributed herein by agreement. The compressed files of the "Palomar Observatory - Space Telescope Science Institute Digital Sky Survey" of the northern sky, based on scans of the Second Palomar Sky Survey are copyright © 1993-1995 by the California Institute of Technology and are distributed herein by agreement.