NGC 6188 - Dragons of Ara

From NASA: Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away. Born in that region only a few million years ago, the massive young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association sculpt the fantastic shapes and power the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The recent star formation itself was likely triggered by winds and supernova explosions, from previous generations of massive stars, that swept up and compressed the molecular gas.

Image Notes: This is another observation from TelescopeLive. A really dense starfield in this image made it a bit of a challenge to process just the main feature in the image. After a good 2 weeks of imaging where I collected the last 3 images I’ve posted, there was a period of poor weather, so I worked on this one in the meantime to keep up. 2 different interpretations here where I am deviating from standard palettes, as I have come to enjoy some of the more magenta tones from the traditional SHO. In one image, a group of my online friends preferred some of the green that is usually removed from AP images, observing that the green in the image made it look a bit like labradorite.

Also included here is a cropped version for a better view of the “Dragons.”