This object is more officially known as Jobes-Emberson 1
(from the names of the 2 astronomers who discovered it in
1939) and as PK 164+31.1 (after the two Czech astronomers
Perek and Kohoutek, who listed it in catalog of such
objects in 1967, along with the galactic longitude and latitude).
However, it is more imaginatively known as the "Headphones
Nebula" (if you tilt your head to the side and look at this image,
it may help you see why). It is a beautiful and dim example of
what are known as "planetary nebulae," though they have nothing
to do with planets. Instead, they are the remains of a star
that has come to the end of its life, exhaled much of its mass,
with the rest collapsing into an immensely dense cinder about the
diameter of the earth, known as a "white dwarf" (though here, that star,
at the middle of the nebula, is strikingly blue). That collapsed stellar core is still
putting out so much energy that it causes the cloud of gasses, which
had been expelled approximately 25,000 years ago, to glow. The expanding nebula
is currently 4 light years across, and yet the earth-sized stellar core at
the middle is still powerful enough to light it all up. In this image, the red
outer ring is ionized hydrogen, and the blue inner portion is ionized oxygen. Those gasses
are extremely diffuse, however -- if you look closely, you can see a couple of distant
galaxies through the gas in the middle of the nebula. The Headphones Nebula is about 1600
light years away from earth, and found in the much-overlooked constellation Lynx
(between Ursa Major and Gemini).

Image data:
Camera: SBIG STL-11000
Exposure: 7.25 hours luminance + 5 hours RGB + 10 hours Hydrogen-alpha
(22 1/4 hours total)
Telescope: 12.5" f/8 Hyperion