Brilliant full moon, but crystal clear and good seeing (1.8 to 2.0"), so "Let's do it!", they cried.
The left half of the image is old data reprocessed. The right half is from last night.
Total exposure: H-alpha (green) 7 hrs, OIII (blue) 10 hrs, SII (red) 11 hrs.
There are many more stars on the right hand side of the image. When we look at images by other folk, this seems to be real and solid.
We see a faint and ghostly blue tracery of complex OIII shock fronts and bubbles, marking out the figure of a dancer, with the head surrounding the main bright cluster, and the hem of the skirt at the bottom of the image.
Immediately left of the ballerina we find the multiple stems of a dark mallee gum, or perhaps brown-black ink diffusing through water.
The bright moon has messed up the very faintest areas around the edges on the right half, so don't waste too much time puzzling over those. We were overjoyed to avoid cabin fever and go up to the observatory.
Image scale 0.55 sec arc/pixel.
Original image here
Best,
Mike and Trish