A turbulent beauty of a nebula also known as the Flaming Star Nebula.  I forgot how much I like this one, such violent turbulence and chaos going on.  What the heck happened and is happening here! (see below)

The image: I captured between mostly cloudy nights; got good Ha, RGB and some Sii; the Oiii signal was pitiful…guess needs a dark site.  Going to be cloudy for the next 10 days at least and this beauty of a beast is also meeting my trees so no more data this year.  That caused me to integrate what I had.  SHO was a failure, but since I had good Ha and Sii, I tried HSS then added RGB stars.  I wanted to show off the amazing detail in the chaos and I think HSS was a success.  I was also able to highlight some of the faint filaments of Ha and Sii.  Go ahead and pixel peek but they are 42MB files.  I’m very pleased how this came out considering all subs were taken from my B7 backyard.  Good glass William Optics!  And perfect match for the 6200mm.

About the nebula: it is both and emission and reflection nebula (how cool is that!) located approximately 1,500 light-years away.  It is illuminated by the young O-type main sequence dwarf AE Aurigae. It was named the Flaming Star Nebula because it contains extensive smoke-like filaments that make AE Aurigae look like it is on fire. The nebular material that looks like smoke is mostly composed of hydrogen, but the dark filaments are made up of carbon-rich dust.  It is about five light-years across and is composed of different regions that glow in red, purple, and blue tones in images. The hot blue star AE Aurigae (I wasn’t able to capture its color in this image) emits so much light that it knocks away electrons from the gas that surrounds it, ionizing the nebula. When a high-energy proton emitted from the hot star recaptures an electron, red light is often emitted and the nebula glows red. The red regions comprise the emission nebula. Other parts of the nebula glow in bluish tones because the blue light of the hot star is reflected by the surrounding dust. The blue parts make up the reflection nebula. The purple parts of the nebula are a mix of emission and reflection regions.