Did you know there’s a California Nebula? I found out myself today thanks to the ever-awesome Astronomy Picture of the Day and its March 7th entry, “Comet over California” showing Comet Holmes gracing the edge of the image:
Today’s entry linked back to a March 2005 APoD entry: “NGC 1499: California Nebula” which shows it off to better effect:
More info on NGC 1499 is available at the Atlas of the Universe and also at SEDS. Wikipedia’s page on the nebula says:
It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a H-Beta filter (isolates the H-Beta line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies. It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth.*
* Other sources place it at about 1,500 light years.