PolarAlign

The images were taken with amateur equipment.  In most cases there were many short exposures combined.  The very faint images are then digitally amplified to become visible. 

The red in the images is caused by intense radiation bombarding hydrogen.  The hydrogen's electron is excited to a higher energy level.  It stays at that higher level for less than a millionth of a second before emitting a photon of light and returning to a lower level.  The color of the light is a fingerprint, precisely identifying the hydrogen in the nebula.

Dust lanes in galaxies appear dark as they block the light from the stars behind.  That dust contracts and gives rise to new stars.  In the images, the pink star forming areas are in the dust lanes. The dust is the accumulated result of the explosions of dying stars over billions of years.

The center of all known galaxies contain enormous black holes. 

Andromeda is headed our way at about 75 miles per second, a quarter of a million miles per hour.  It's thought that in about 2.5 billion years, our galaxies will merge to form one colossal galaxy.

Our sun consumes 700 million tons of hydrogen per second.

Hydrogen becomes helium which weighs 0.7% less than the hydrogen.  That 0.7% loss is converted to pure energy as described by Einstein's famous E=MC^2.

Atomic bombs convert matter to energy. A 15 kiloton bomb converts just one gram of matter to energy.