16″ at 228x: LH 76, the OB association responsible for blowing the superbubble, is a gorgeous, round cloud of stars, ~4′ in diameter, with well over two dozen resolved stars of mixed magnitude set against the beautiful glow of unresolved starlight and nebulosity. The cloud of stars is very intriguing in that one can discern its boundaries, except to its north where the stars appear to have fizzled out, but without disturbing the roundness of the cloud. Odd and intriguing! A string of stars runs roughly N-S with a beautifully bright mag 10 star dangling off the south end of the string – it is HD 269723, a yellow supergiant. On the western side of the cluster is another of the Cloud’s wonderful slightly bloated “stars” that is actually a very compact cluster, mag 12.7 HD 269714. The ionising stars are lovely white sparks: mag 12.2 HD 269698 (type O4), mag 12.7 HD 269717 (type OB), and mag 12.1 LHA 120-S 47 (type B2). N57E, lying to the southwest of the main action, so to speak, is a very cool thing to see! Had I not known what it was, it would never have registered as anything more than a random faint star among a lot of other random faint stars. But it is a young stellar object, a tiny, round, mag 14.2 stellar droplet. And last but by no means least (although it is also rather faint), mag 14.6 Wolf-Rayet star, Brey 46, lies on the western outskirts

Without a filter, the star cloud is nestled in a beautiful pearly haze of nebulosity that bulges out on the eastern and southern sides. And like all the superbubbles, N57A has a tremendous response to the UHC filter. The sweep of nebulosity directly to the east and south of LH 76’s stars is beautifully bright and intricate looking, having the most delicate and tantalising curlicue appearance that speaks subtly of how it acquired its nickname. The nebulosity fades rapidly to the north, west and south. I could pick up none of the honeycomb nebulosity to the south and southeast that is so stunningly visible in the image.

16″ at 228x + UHC filter: The small emission object, N57B, lies beyond the southern outskirts of the superbubble and it appears as the smallest, faintest little smudge of nebulosity; no edges, simply a ghostly little splot of very faintly glowing light.

N57D, lying off the superbubble’s east coast, wasn’t visible in my telescope.