This is the Wizard Nebula in the constellation Cephus. The colorful nebula surrounds an open cluster of stars catalogued as NGC 7380. Look carefully at the wider field image and it is clear that there is a lot more nebula there than the ostentatious core - there just aren't any nearby star to illuminate it.

This nebula is in a very dense star field - so dense that I filtered down about 70% of the stars obscuring the target so that it could be seen properly.

This nebula is 20 light years across and 8500 light years away. At the center of the cluster lies DH Cephei, a close binary system consisting of two massive O-type stars. These are the primary ionizing source for the surrounding H II region, and are driving out the surrounding gas and dust while triggering star formation in the neighboring region. Hydrogen light, H-alpha, is the dominant red color of the nebula. Other images I've seen show a lot of blue light in places; this could also be hydrogen and I'm baffled as to why I don't see more of it. It's probbaly the source of the purpling of color at the botton left of the nebula.

This image is the result of about 5 hours of exposure - 45 frames at 400 seconds each. 10 frames failed leaving 35, 3.9 hours worth, to be stacked into this picture.