van den Bergh catalogue: 39 imaging targets
Sidney van den Bergh listed 158 reflection nebulae in 1966, picked from the prints of the Palomar Sky Survey. A reflection nebula is a cloud of dust that scatters the light of a nearby star, which often makes it look blue. The planner includes 39 of them; they are broadband targets, because narrowband filters cut most of their light, and many are faint enough to need dark skies.
Further reading: Van den Bergh Catalog (Wikipedia)
vdB1
A small reflection nebula in Cassiopeia, the first entry in van den Bergh's 1966 catalogue, about 1,600 light-years away.
vdB4
A reflection nebula in Cassiopeia built around the variable V594 Cas and tied to the very young open cluster NGC 225, about 2,200 light-years away.
vdB7
A small reflection nebula in Cassiopeia, just south of the eclipsing variable RZ Cassiopeiae. RZ Cas is not what lights it: an eleventh-magnitude star does.
vdB13
A small reflection nebula in Aries, about 4′ across, at the position of the B8V star BD+30 540, which is about 9th magnitude. The star's parallax puts it about 960 light-years away.
vdB14
A faint bluish reflection nebula in Camelopardalis, glowing with the light of the 4th-magnitude star B Camelopardalis.
vdB15
A bluish reflection nebula in Camelopardalis wrapped around C Camelopardalis, a star of about 5th magnitude.
vdB16
A small reflection nebula on the border of Aries and Taurus, about 7° northwest of the Pleiades. It reflects a 9th-magnitude star at its centre, and one source gives its size as roughly 7′.
vdB17
NGC 1333, the Embryo Nebula, a reflection nebula in Perseus lit by the B8 star BD +30 549.
vdB18
A small, faint blue reflection nebula in Perseus, midway between Algol and ξ Persei. A variable star, HD 22114 (also V496 Persei), lights it.
vdB20
A broad patch of reflection nebulosity in Taurus, catalogued by van den Bergh, surrounding Sterope, Taygeta, Maia, Electra and Merope in the Pleiades. It takes in the NGC 1432 and NGC 1435 nebulae.
vdB21
A small reflection nebula in Taurus, about 6′ across, lying near the Pleiades. The Merope Nebula is about 26′ away, and the Pleiades are about 444 light-years away.
vdB22 — Merope Nebula
The Merope Nebula, also NGC 1435, is a reflection nebula inside the Pleiades, about 440 light-years away. Only the star Merope lights it, and that star sits within the nebula.
vdB23
A reflection nebula in Taurus, about 17′ across, around Alcyone in the Pleiades and only 2.6′ from the cluster's centre. The cluster is about 444 light-years away.
vdB27
A reflection nebula in Taurus that shines by the light of a nearby star, about 5′ across. It lies in the Taurus Molecular Cloud region, roughly 8° northeast of the Pleiades.
vdB30
A very faint ring of dust in Camelopardalis around the blue supergiant α Camelopardalis, about 7,000 light-years away.
vdB31
A blue reflection nebula in Auriga, lit by the seventh-magnitude young star AB Aurigae roughly 470 light-years from us. That star has a dusty disk with evidence of planet formation.
vdB32
A small bluish reflection nebula in Auriga, lit by the B5V star BD+44 1080 (magnitude 9.29). Close by is the eclipsing variable ε Aurigae, which peaks at magnitude 2.92.
vdB38
A blue reflection nebula in Orion, next to the red emission nebula Sh2-263. Other names for it are Cederblad 44, DG 53 and Magakian 97.
vdB43
A small reflection nebula in Orion, lit by the B8V star HD 36471 (magnitude 8.70).
vdB46
A small reflection nebula in Orion, about 3′ across. SIMBAD lists it under BD-06 1253, an emission-line star of spectral type A1 whose Gaia parallax puts it roughly 1,200 light-years away.
vdB49
A reflection nebula in Orion lit by ω Orionis, a blue giant of 4th magnitude about 1,500 light-years away.
vdB52
NGC 2023, one of the largest reflection nebulae in the sky at about 10′ × 10′, in Orion about 1,300 light-years away.
vdB93
The compact top of the Seagull complex, where Monoceros meets Canis Major, about 3,700 light-years away. It glows from HD 53367, a young Be star of about 20 solar masses.
vdB96
A reflection nebula in the east of Canis Major, about 4,900 light-years away and a little over 10′ wide from east to west.
vdB105
A reflection nebula in Ophiuchus. SIMBAD lists it under HD 147889, a B2 main-sequence star of magnitude 7.9 whose parallax puts it about 450 light-years away.
vdB119
A small blue reflection nebula in Sagittarius, also catalogued as NGC 6590 and first noted by John Herschel in 1830.
vdB121
A tiny reflection nebula in Sagittarius, about 4′ across, in the same region as the Swan Nebula (M17) and the cluster M18.
vdB126
A bluish reflection nebula in Vulpecula, also listed as LBN 134, lit by the 8.6-magnitude star HD 182918. It lies in a very crowded Milky Way region, beside a second blue reflection nebula, LBN 133.
vdB128
A faint veil of reflection nebula in Cygnus surrounding the magnitude 5.6 blue supergiant HD 190603, whose strong wind built the nebula.
vdB130
A reflection nebula in Cygnus about 1.5° southwest of Sadr, lit by HD 228789 in a very young cluster. Its distance was first put at about 3,260 light-years and later revised to about 4,890.
vdB131
A blue reflection nebula in Cygnus, one of three that make up the NGC 6914 complex, which Wikipedia places about 6,000 light-years away. Édouard Stephan discovered NGC 6914 in 1881.
vdB138
A small reflection nebula in Cygnus around HD 199714, a B8 supergiant of about magnitude 8.3. The star's Gaia parallax puts it roughly 2,000 light-years away.
vdB141 — Ghost Nebula
The Ghost Nebula, a reflection nebula joined to an emission nebula in Cepheus, about 1,470 light-years away and also listed as Sh2-136.
vdB142 — Elephant Trunk Nebula
The reflection nebula at the centre of IC 1396 in Cepheus.
vdB145
A small reflection nebula in Cygnus that shines with the light of HD 206887, a star of about magnitude 8.
vdB149
A reflection nebula in Cepheus, lit by the B8 main-sequence star BD+72 1018 and sitting within a far bigger dust cloud.
vdB150
A reflection nebula in Cepheus, lit by HD 210806, an 8th-magnitude B8 subgiant. It shares a large dust cloud with vdB 149, and the pair is put at about 1,019 light-years from us.
vdB152
A faint blue reflection nebula in Cepheus, also called Ced 201 or the Wolf's Cave Nebula, about 1,400 light-years away.
vdB158
A small blue reflection nebula in Andromeda, the illuminated end of the elongated dark cloud LBN 534.