Loki's Dagger

Love is a dagger. A weapon to be wielded far away or up close. You can see yourself in it. It’s beautiful . . . until it makes you bleed. Loki’s blade glows in the black velvet of space. A blistering shockwave of flaming gas consumes everything in its path. The sheer quantity of energy is staggering. It could engulf our entire solar system ten thousand times without slowing down. A single tiny filament in this image is wider than the distance between Earth and Pluto. Acquisition Details: NGC 6995 is a supernova remnant located in the constellation Cygnus, approximately 2,400 light-years from Earth. The nebulous explosion was formed by the death of a massive star around 20 times the size of our sun, which perished thousands of years ago. The supernova is still expanding and changes in subtle ways over time. I captured this image over several nights near the Gulf of Mexico, using my apochromatic refracting telescope. Special filters called narrowband filters were used along with the camera and optical system to isolate the unique wavelengths emitted by the ionized gas clouds.