That hard-to-miss bright blob just left of center is called the “Crescent Nebula.” It originated a few hundred thousand years ago, when the central star expelled its outer layers. This was a time when our ancestors lived a hunter-gatherer existence, and our planet was coinhabited by no less than three different hominid species. Since that time, the expelled material has moved steadily outward, forming a shell around the star. Radiation from that same star then began to collide with that shell of material, molding the complex shapes you see here, and causing it to glow brightly. Some of the photons resulting from that interaction then traveled through space for five thousand years until they arrived in my back yard and impacted the sensor in my camera last August. I was using a wide-field camera, so you can see other regions of nebulosity, some of which are considerably closer to us than the Crescent.
