The bright star near the top center of this image is Merope, one
of the "Seven Sisters" of the Pleiades. This star cluster
is moving through a cloud of interstellar gas, and the
reflected starlight creates the beautiful blue wisps that
show up in long-exposure photographs. This blue reflection
nebula surrounds the Pleiades (see here), but the area around Merope
is the brightest part of it. Very close to Merope, just below
and to the left of that star (look on the "original" size),
is a bright clump within the nebula. This is IC 349, discovered
in 1890 with the Lick Observatory's 36" telescope by E. E. Barnard
and so sometimes called "Barnard's Merope Nebula").
This object is difficult to see (or to photograph) because
it is so close to the bright glare of Merope. It is in fact only
0.06 light years from the star (which is very close in astronomical
terms, though still 3600 times the distance between the sun and the earth).
You can see an image of this object from the Hubble Space telescope here.

This image was chosen as the Anacortes Astronomy Picture of the Day
for January 16, 2010 here.

Image data:
Camera: SBIG ST-4000XCM
Exposure: 5 minutes x 24
Telescope: 10" Schmidt-Newtonian, Baader MPCC