This nebula is a star forming region of our galaxy.  It can be found in the constellation of Orion at the tip of his sword.  The Great Orion nebula can be seen with the naked eye and is the most know nebula in the northern hemisphere.  When looked at through a  telescope, no color can be seen because our eyes are not capable of seeing color in very faint light.  This object is about 1300 light years from earth.  When the light left this nebula, the Mayans were putting on the finishing touches to one of their greatest temples, Copán.

Long exposure taken at Stellefane near Springfield, VT. 

Near the center of this image, you can find the constellation Sagitarius, sometimes called the teapot.  If you can find the teapot, you will notice how the "steam" of the Milky Way is coming out of the spout. Also in the image is the Dark Horse, far right. Peering at the Milky Way in the summer means you are looking directly at the center of our galaxy 30,000 light years away.

This heavy star forming area is approx 5,000 light yrs away and nearly 130 light yrs across. The image above is a series of hundreds of stacked images taken from my observatory over multiple nights of nearly perfect imaging conditions... a rare treat in Vermont.  

This is not "true" color but rather a technique to pull out more detail from deep sky objects. The components of white light, (red, green, and blue) are represented by the narrow bands of light emitted by Hydrogen(H-alpha) Oxygen(OIII) and Sulfur(SII.) It's called Hubble Palette because the red and green channels are swapped to bring out more detail.

This lacy image is actually a approx. 6000 years old remnant of an exploded star (supernova) in the constellation of Cygnus.  To help imagine what you’re looking at…  picture a balloon that was over filled and popped.  If you took a freeze frame at that exact moment, you would see small pieces of the balloon flying thru the air.  This nebula is like a piece of that balloon.  Supernova explosions are responsible for all of the heavier elements on our periodic table.  To quote Carl Sagan, “We’re made of star stuff.” The Veil is a favorite of many astrophotographers due to its beauty and difficulty to image.  Visually, it is approx the size of the moon in the sky. Light left this object around 2,600 years ago around the time that Confucius was born.

This is the eastern portion of the super nova remnant, the Cygnus Loop. Is it roughly 1500ly from earth. The super nova exploded approx. 6000 years ago and is visible in the three parts; the Eastern Veil, Western Veil and Pickering's Triangle. This is around 2hrs of exposure time in the three wavelengths, Red, Green and Blue.

Arguably, the most well known spiral galaxy in the sky.  The galactic plane is perfectly perpendicular to us.  The galaxy is also popular due to the active consumption of its very close neighbor, NGC5195 or M51b.

3 million light-years away from Earth is the constellation Triangulum. When light left this galaxy to reach us, "Lucy," our ape like ancester (Australopithecus afarensis) was roaming the earth, probably topping out around 4ft tall.

One of the best examples of an edge-on galaxy, aptly named, "The Needle." At 50 million light years away, light left this galaxy just as primates were showing up on the evolutionary timeline. 

This group of galaxies called the Leo Triplet in the constellation of Leo.  The light left this trio about 35million years ago... about the same time humans were first starting to be "human" in modern day Africa. As Richard Dawkins says, "We are all Africans."