An extragalactic supernova remnant

On a black, star-filled background float two large, wispy blue bubbles of gas. The rounder one at left has a small bright pink-and-white knot at its lower edge. The bigger, more tangled structure at right blends pale blue filaments with patches of red, all scattered across thousands of faint stars.

Charles Pevsner, taken from Rio Hurtado, Chile

LHA 120-N 40 is the glowing debris of a star that exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Milky Way satellite galaxy about 163,000 light-years away in Dorado. The shell that appears in blue was blown out by the supernova, while smaller regions of emission appear as reddish knots. Pevsner gathered 7¾ hours of exposure in Hα/OIII/RGB filters with a 5-inch f/7.7 refractor.