Imaged by me from Brisbane, Australia. 12.5 hrs of overall imaging time over three nights with about 4 hours each on the Sii, Ha and Oiii filters to produce this narrowband image. Used the Hubble Palette for the colour with Sii to Red, Ha to Green and Oiii to Blue. NGC 6188 is a star forming nebula, and is sculpted by the massive, young stars that have recently formed there – some are only a few million years old

Sorry for my ignorance 😅 I feel like you explained it here, but are these colors real?

Hi, this is a false colour image taken using narrowband filters.

The nebula is called an emission nebula. An emission nebula is a nebula formed of ionized gases that emit light of various wavelengths. The most common source of ionization is high-energy ultraviolet photons emitted from a nearby hot star. The common wavelengths that astronomers like to capture are those from ionised Sulphur (Sii), Hydrogen (Ha) and Oxygen (Oiii). I use a monochromatic camera and then use filters to capture the light. For this image I used filters that are called narrowband filters because they only capture a very narrow part of the light spectrum. The ones I used capture Sii, Ha and Oiii. I then assign each of these filters to a colour to produce the final image. The Hubble Palette was developed by NASA and it basically maps Sii data to red, Ha to green and Oiii to blue.

This video has a really good explanation on narrowband astrophotography. https://youtu.be/0Fp2SlhlprU

I'm new to this so sorry but what's the construct in white in the lower right corner of the blue spear almost appears as a half dome?

Hi that is a separate nebula complex call the Dragon's Egg. It has two designations, NGC6164 for the inner area and NGC6165 for the outer bubble. The star at the center created everything. Known as the Dragon's Egg, this star -- a rare, hot, luminous O-type star some 40 times as massive as the Sun -- created not only the complex nebula (NGC 6164) that immediately surrounds it, but also the encompassing blue halo. Its name is derived, in part, from the region's proximity to the picturesque NGC 6188, known as the fighting Dragons of Ara. In another three to four million years the massive star will likely end its life in a supernova explosion.

Basically the star goes through periods where it blows its outer shell off into space. It looks far better in normal light. This website shows a far better image of it in the visible light spectrum https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140522.html

Thank you for taking the time and commenting I'll take a look at it.

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wow thank you! I appreciate learning new things :) I’ll definitely check out the vid too. Beautiful image

Wow this is absolutely beautiful. Thanks for the insightful comments too.

Tomorrow I'll go out for my first attempt at astrophotography, really excited!

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Amazing. What’s that circle with 4 dots in de bottom left of the picture.

I am not sure to be honest. It doesnt come up with a designation when I search for it. If I had to guess, it is either a bubble in the surrounding gas caused by the solar winds from the star at the centre or it is an imaging artifact from my scope. The stars in the corners of the image are off due to a backfocus issue I had at the time so it might be related to that. Not sure though.

It’s it explained in the video OP links below, but those bandwidths are pronounced “S-2” “H-alpha” and “O-3”.

Whenever I see such photos, I imagine some alien craft might be hauling ass through it and we will never know…

Yup same. Each little dot is a star like our sun and while I was looking at them, there might be someone on a planet out there looking back at me.