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As far as I know, I was the first person to deliberately photograph this object, with this photo posted to AstronomyForum.net on 30 Sept 2013. Of course it had been accidentally photographed many times before (for example, in wide-field Cygnus images) but mine seems to have been the first close-up image of DWB 171, also known as LBN 331. As of this writing my image has inspired two others: one by Dan Crowson posted to CloudyNights on 13 Oct 2013, and one by "Nauris.de" on Astrobin dated 2 Nov 2013.

I have dubbed this object "The Witch's Other Broom" due to its similarity to NGC 6960, The Witch's Broom (which is also in my gallery here, under the name The Firebird). Features common to both brooms include:

  - Located in the constellation Cygnus
  - A bright star is involved (32 Cyg here, 52 Cyg in the Witch's Broom)
  - The object consists of long, thin "threads" of nebulosity.

One difference is that The Witch's Broom contains both hydrogen (red) and oxygen (green/blue) emissions, whereas this broom is hydrogen only. This image was created from 4 hours of H-alpha exposure plus 30 minutes of RGB.