by Dean Salman
Sh 2-263 lies near another dim Sharpless object, SH2-265, and the two can be picked up with a large field of view of about 3x2 degrees. Sh 2-263 is the brighter of the two and also has a nice reflection nebula around it, which makes using the H-Alpha filter unnecessary unless you want to pick up the nearby nebula which is mostly red. By using an HA-RGB image and an RGB image, you can create a composite that preserves the reflection and at the same time uses the HA channel to enhance the red. I used my MakNewt 8 inch F/4 astrograph and the ST-10 XME CCD and a total expouse of 14 hours.