Sharpless 2-308 is a reflection nebula located in the constellation of Canis Major (The Big Dog). This huge cosmic bubble of expanding gas covers an area larger than the full moon. It lies at a distance of 5200 light years from Earth, and is over 60 light years in diameter. This bubble of gas has been blown off from the massive Wolf-Rayet type star EZ Canis Majoris, shown at the center of the image, and is expanding at a rate of 60 kilometers per second. The gas is illuminated by radiation from EZ Canis Majoris.
This image acquired on December 28, 2013, is a 1 hour 12 minute integration of 6 minute exposures through the Celestron C-11 at f/2, using the HyperStar III imaging system and the Starlight Express SXVR-H694C color CCD camera, operating at a temperature of -10 degrees below ambient temperature and binned 1 x 1.
Guided, captured and combined using Maxim DL5 Pro. Post processed using PhotoShop CS2, Gradient XTerminator, StarShrink, Carboni's Astro Tools and NoiseWare.