My favorite movie is the 1948 David O. Selznick production of the Robert Nathan novella, "Portrait of Jennie". It stars Joseph Cotton and Jennifer Jones, with a nice supporting appearance by Ethel Barrymore. The movie is unusual as an American film--it is what you might label "Magical Realism"--and is a wistful, mysterious romance. 

Through this movie I was introduced to the piano music of Debussy and it sparked a lot of deep thought in a young boy. One line (among many) from the movie that has stuck with me since I first saw the movie is:

"Where I come from, nobody knows; And where I'm going, everything goes..."

Today's image is a portion of the supernova remnant SNR G65.3+5.7 Let's call it Jennie. Jennie is much, much older than the nearby famous Veil Nebula (30K years vs. 15K years). As a result, it is correspondingly larger (230 ly across vs. the 70 ly of the Veil). It is also located in Cygnus, very close to β Cygni, the beautiful double star better known as Albireo. 

Last year when I was imaging Albireo I "discovered" Jennie, never having seen nor heard of it before. It appeared in my wide field ever-so-faintly and I wanted to learn more and was determined to image at least a portion of Jennie this summer.

The portion shown here is the brightest section of the remnant, and is designated Sh2-91 (the other two Sharpless objects comprising the larger SNR are Sh2-94 and Sh2-96).

This SNR is so faint...so very, very faint. The brighter nearby Veil grabs nearly all our attention, and this lovely and largely forgotten SNR--still expanding at 30K kilometers per second--will soon dissipate into the cosmic background, never to be seen nor remembered again.

The movie reminds me to ask: Where from and where to? Big questions. Evidence still lingers 30000 years later of the explosive death of just one particular star. One star, now spread across 230 light years.

Accompanying Jennie and perhaps of some interest to those of you with a really, really deep view is the bright red object at the top center of the picture. This is a so-called planetary nebula, PK 64+5.1, a little known, rarely imaged object with an ultra rare WC star at its center ( HD 184738 ). The object is more colloquially known as "Campbell's Hydrogen Star", although from my understanding it is carbon and oxygen that this baby is burning. I'd like to issue you a challenge to spend a few hours on it! Show me the results, please! I can't get more than this tiny glowing red orb with the RedCat. It's mysterious and forgotten, just like Jennie! 

And so the movie reminds me to ask yet again: Where from and where to? Big questions. Science can tell us only so much, and much mystery remains...and so I just continue to look and bear witness.

"Where I come from, nobody knows; And where I'm going, everything goes; The wind blows; The sea flows… And nobody knows."

So finally, today, I present to you my Portrait of Jennie.

Thank you for taking the time to look and to read about these lesser known objects in Cygnus. I hope to see your portraits of Jennie or Campbell's Star in the future!

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Update 30 Jul: @Gary Imm  has just now published a nice image of Campbell's Star. Check it out!