Crawling in the dark

Katelyn Beecroft, taken from London, Ontario, Canada

The Gecko Nebula (LBN 437) is located in — where else? — Lacerta the Lizard. The object is a reflection nebula, lit by the young stars within. It overlaps the much larger emission nebula Sh 2–126, whose red strands run through this image. The imager used a 2.8-inch f/5.6 refractor and a cooled one-shot color camera with two different filters: 14 hours of exposure with a UV/IR filter to capture the Gecko, plus 8 hours of exposure with a dual Hα/OIII narrowband filter to capture the emission nebula.