The Fighting Dragons of Cepheus

Here be dragons…?

The area of night sky occupied by the constellation of Cepheus is home to a plethora of deep sky goodness. The area around 2 of Lynd’s nebulae, namely LBN552 and LDN 1228, is no exception; the shapes made by the dust clouds are said to resemble fighting dragons, which has led to these objects being given their popular name of ‘The Fighting Dragons of Cepheus’.  I’ll leave that to your imagination!

This is a 2-panel mosaic of the area; however, the diffuse nebulosity is much larger than what I have shown here, with each nebula stretching for several more fields-of-view in each direction. Towards the centre of the image is one of the relatively rare yellow / orange reflection nebulae; this one is designated as Cohen 129 (or RNO129).

 https://astrob.in/hq8jpd/0/