Image made near the Blue Mountains, in August 2022.
The image shows filaments of ionized Hydrogen gas within a region of active star formation in the Cygnus constellation (“The Swan”). The intensely dark plumes are made of dust.
The “bubble” in the centre is the Crescent Nebula, a shell formed when ultra high-speed gas ejected from a hot, dying star, hits a slower-moving and older ejection of gas.
Normally appearing red and chock-full of stars, here I have applied a false colour palette and reduced the stars to reveal the finer structure of the nebulae.
In the image you also see other deep space objects, such as Butterfly Nebula near the top right, with a dark midline and glowing “wings”. In the bottom left, we have the Tulip Nebula.
This image was made from just over an hour’s worth of exposures, and took an ungodly number of hours to get the processing right.