This is a cool feature right under Soul's infant head, roughly where the collar bone or shoulder would be. Image is visible spectrum only. No filters. May try overlay with Ha if I get another good evening.

(A day later) Yep, shot 180 minutes of Ha and added it to the stack. Brought out more red, general detail, and reduced noise.

All data updated.

My blog post:

Is a supernova trying to reveal something to us?

This cool display of star power is within the Soul nebula and is made up of two cataloged features IC1871 and LBN673. It's a tiny display when looking at the whole Soul nebula. Close up, it becomes much more grand.

The cluster of super bright blue stars at the top is probably where an unstable star self-destructed. The group we see in its place was created immediately after, made from the core material that was super-compressed by the outer layers a millisecond before the explosion. This process can also produce a white dwarf and even a black hole, depending on the original star's size, density, and gravitational pull.

Blue stars are young and very hot. What's old becomes new again!

The force of the blast was violent, spewing outward most of the star's mass. There's a small lone cloud of dark matter, in the middle of it all, looking somehow special, as it's cradled by the glowing gasses underneath. To some, it looks like a person born from within the surrounding destruction.

The red and orange is coming from ionized hydrogen, activated to glow by the solar wind from those new stars (TMI: radiated particles collide with the hydrogen atoms, splitting electrons away and causing a chain reaction of electron swapping that produces the phosphorescent orange glow). The wispy shades of blue and lavender are thin layers of other molecules. Probably stuff like oxygen and maybe some smoke & ash mixed in. Unlike the reactive hydrogen, they are simply reflecting the actual color of the starlight. Swirling around all of this are dark clouds likely made up of heavier compounds that don't visibly react with the radiation.

Both the glowing clouds and dark masses can produce new stars, as the gasses' own gravitational pull can cause the clouds to collapse in places, condensing, and then igniting from the pressure and heat.

But, mostly, this is just a dang beautiful piece of sky. It's in an adjoining spiral of our own Milky Way, hovering near the constellation Cassiopeia, 7500 light years away.

I also have a wider view of both the Heart and Soul nebulas from last year: https://imagimedia.smugmug.com/AstroPix/i-j7vbfDC/A

Tonight's feature is in this wider image, located at the top, near the "shoulder" under infant Soul's chin. It's upside down in this case. Of course, is there really such a thing in space?

I shot the closer image over two nights this week while the moon was out, so I'm surprised the result came out so well. This is contradicted by the tune I'm listening to while processing images—Brad Mehldau wailing away at his piano with No Moon at All.