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Come join the friendliest, most engaging and inclusive astronomy forum geared for beginners and advanced telescope users, astrophotography devotees, plus check out our "Astro" goods vendors.
NGC 6357, also know as the Lobster Nebula, lies at a distance of 6,500 Light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. There are numerous massive stars lying within this extremely large emission nebula, notably the cluster Pismis 24 located within the large blueish hole near the center, has some of the most massive stars known in our galaxy, many of them being over 100 times the mass of our Sun. The central region of the nebula has numerous pillars of dusty molecular gas which probably hide massive protostars. The intricate shapes of the gases within the nebula are carved out by the stellar winds and huge amounts of radiation from the young and massive stars that we can see and from those embedded in the gas clouds.
This image was a REAL pain to process! I finally decided on the traditional Hubble Palette and then using ColorMask and curves to try to get the colors to be pleasing (trying to get the Blue to show up in the central regions was a REAL challenge) and then processing a separate RGB image to allow me to substitute RGB stars for NB stars. I'm still not completely satisfied, so I'll keep trying to make this better.
Anyway, hope ya like it!
