Thanks for the comments folks.
Below is an animated gif of the same area from my image and one from the Spitzer Space IR Telescope.
The Spitzer image shows dark dust as a bright reddish colour.
Here is a larger animated gif showing the Spitzer image superimposed on my image. 5MB
http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.co...9_09/car03.gif
In both cases you will see the relation between bright nebula and the dark dust.
I used RegiStar to align the images.
Bert