Sh2-247 in Gemini was imaged back in January. It was so faint my usual 2x10' color data was unusable. Even the luminosity frames were worthless but the 3 30 minute H alpha frames held usable but faint data. I need to try for color data using more and longer subframes but that will have to wait. For now, this will have to do.

Sky Map's section on Sharpless objects has this to say about it.

According to a 1989 study, Sh 2-247 is part of the Gem OB1 association, contains 37 thousand solar masses of gas and dust at a distance of 2200 pc, and appears to be physically connected through CO filaments with Sh 2-252. It is ionised by the B0 III giant LS V +21 27.

Avedisova agrees on the ionising star but gives a larger distance estimate of 3500 +/- 800 parsecs. She places Sh 2-247 in the complex star formation region SFR 188.93+0.79 with 51 components, including 9 masers, several infrared star clusters, at least 4 molecular clouds, and the young stellar object IRAS 06058+2138.

Now you know as much as I do about it. For the parsec challenged one pc equals 3.26 light years so the first estimate puts it at about 7200 light years while the second is saying 11,400 +/- 2600 light years. Since no error bar is given for the first estimate I can't tell if they overlap or not.

14" LX200R @ f/10, Ha=3x30', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME