The Cocoon Nebula is a star nursery. The central star is exciting the red Ha emission and responsible for the blue reflection nebula around it. Recent work suggests the wonderful western dark tail is actually closer to us, so is not associated with the main nebulosity (
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.11364.pdf). This is perhaps not a big surprise, as we are looking deep into our own galaxy, as can be seen by the incredible starfield, which comes part and parcel with the dark dust clouds. The nebula is about 2800 light years distance, based on most recent estimates.
With this orientation, I see the Running Man on the lower right, reminds me so much of Orion's Running Man Nebula, but inverted, dark not bright.
This was a challenging object, even at this fast f-ratio, due to my city location (which increases sky brightness just as much as the target of interest), and as most of us found traces of smoke all summer (yet, we are the lucky ones, who were so little affected away from the horrible damage ).
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