50 subs with Triad (high bands only), 20 RGB Narrow band plus Ha. All in same live stack. 

It looks like a celestial nod to the Klingons' Bird of Prey: This is the Western Veil Nebula (NGC6960). The Western portion is just a small part of the overall nebulonic cloud.

The Veil Nebula is the last remnants of a supernova. Star-crud was blasted away in pieces like a popped balloon. The supernova came from a star 20 times more massive than the Sun. It exploded maybe 15,000 years ago, which is yesterday in the heavens. When it exploded, it would have been brighter than star Venus, and would have been visible here in daytime.

Veil is close to us, at about 2400 light years away in the Milky Way's next spiral arm. What's left of the original star is probably reduced to a passive white dwarf. It'll glow white hot from heat alone until it finally fades away completely in a few million years.

The whole nebula is huge. It covers as much area in our sky as 36 full moons! It's just too dim to see. I used a wide refractor to capture the whole thing. The closer image is from a deep space reflector that is much stronger. The entire region is teaming with new stars formed from dense gasses. Hydrogen is red, oxygen is blue...the same stuff we're familiar with here on Earth. Hydrogen is ionized to glow by the surrounding stars it just created. Then oxygen belies it’s presence by reflecting those stars’ light.

Some parts of the nebula appear to be rope-like filaments. Scientists think that the shock waves are so thin that the shell is visible only when viewed exactly edge-on, giving the wrinkles the appearance of filaments.

The Nebula is fairly dim, which makes it all the more amazing that William Herschel discovered it in September, 1784, using telescopes that were fairly crude and didn't benefit from cameras running time exposures.

I've exposed this image for five hours now and the sky is turning blue with the approaching sun. Time to bring stuff in. The birds are waking up and announcing arrival of morning. On top of that cacophony, I'm listening to the Tord Gustavsen Trio’s Edges of Happiness.

Good morning!