NGC 6188, Dragons of Ara(Planewave DR350) (Crop)

Dragons of Ara ,  NGC 6188 This image shows dark and light shapes of fighting dragons winging their way through dusty clouds of light emitting gas and dust.  The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark and 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 reddish Ara OB1 star cluster(just left and above the image center)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. The field of view spans about 4 full Moons, corresponding to about 170 light years at the estimated distance of NGC 6188. The dramatic false color image  in the Hubble palette highlights the emission of hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen gases energized by intense ultraviolet radiation from the nearby stars. Green in the image comes from Hydrogen gas emission, red  from Sulfur  and blue from Oxygen. The image was done by a Planewave DS350 telescope in Obstech, El Sauce, Chile. It combines 3 and 5 minute narrowband images and stars from RGB images. This is a cropped version of the larger image and it has been increased in resolution by 2x to see more detail.This is the third image of this target that I have done and the others can be seen as adjacent images using the next button on the web page. I think this is the most pleasing of the three sets of images.