Oksana Korda | Astro Art & Science on Instagram: "CRESCENT NEBULA - NGC 6888 This emission nebula formed from the powerful stellar wind of the Wolf–Rayet star WR 136. The star is shedding its outer layers at extreme speeds, creating collision fronts where older, slower material meets newer, faster outflows. These shocks heat the gas and ignite the nebula’s filamentary structure in glowing hydrogen and oxygen emissions. Inside the shell, turbulent instabilities carve the fine threads and arcs, re

Oksana Korda | Astro Art & Science on Instagram: "The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy around 13.6 billion years old with large pivoting arms stretching out across the cosmos. Our home galaxy’s disk is about 100,000 light-years in diameter and just 1000 light-years thick. Just as Earth orbits the Sun, the solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way. Despite hurtling through space at speeds of around 515,000mph (828,000kmph) our solar system takes approximately 250 million years to complet

Oksana Korda | Astro Art & Science on Instagram: "SH2-114 - COMPLEX IONIZED FILAMENTS Sh2-114 is a faint, rarely imaged emission nebula in Cygnus, shaped by tangled interactions between stellar winds and the region’s dense, irregular interstellar medium. Its thin red filaments trace shock-excited hydrogen gas, stretched and compressed by past outflows from massive stars. Because the nebula is extremely diffuse and lacks a dominant central source, its structure reflects the chaotic history of mul

Oksana Korda | Astro Art & Science on Instagram: "The bright orange star is 32 Cygni - a binary system with an eclipsing red giant and hot blue companion. Flowing across it is LBN 331, a section of the Veil Nebula’s eastern filament. This glowing strand of ionized gas marks the shock front of a supernova that exploded over 10,000 years ago. The filaments’ structure reveals the turbulent interaction between the blast wave and the surrounding interstellar medium. Thank you @colorado_astro for capt