Continuing our tour of the striking IPHAS images, here are two of Sh 2-173. This HII region appears to be part of a supershell surrounding the Perseus arm OB association Cas OB5. It is believed to be ionised by the O9V star BD +60 39 and may be associated with the star cluster NGC 103, according to Avedisova. The bright star near the emission ridge is the M2II giant HD 1613. These images only show a part of Sh 2-173, which in turn is embedded in a region with a huge amount of diffuse nebulosity, as this large scale image of this part of the sky reveals.
There are several artifacts in these images, partly caused by my awkward construction of a mosaic from IPHAS images with different luminosity levels, but also by banding that exists in the original IPHAS images. A good astroimager would probably be able to remove these artifacts.
Nevertheless, these images reveals a wealth of new details about what has been an obscure nebula up to this point.
These hydrogen-alpha images are so interesting that in the long term I think I'll need to create a separate gallery on this site to showcase them.
