NGC 6888 is an emission nebula that features a bright central star. This star is classified as a "Wolf-Rayet" star and is a star that is nearing its end. The central star creates a strong steller wind as it sheds off its outer layers. This probably is the cause of the structure of the nebula. Eventually, the central star will end its life in a spectactular supernova explosion.

In this image, North is Up. This image is cropped to 68% of the original.

Exposure Details
Lens	Celestron C-8 SCT with Celestron focal reducer
Focal Length	1260mm
Focal Ratio	f/6.3
Mount	Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2
Guiding	80mm f/11 guidescope with PHD Guiding
Camera	Canon 20Da
Exposure	135 subexposures of 180 seconds each at ISO 1600 - 6 3/4 hours total
Calibration	30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias
Date	August 29 and 30, 2011
Temperature	65F on 8/29, 62F on 8/30
SQM Reading
Seeing	4 of 5 on both nights
Location	Pine Mountain Club, California
Software Used	Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking and digital development. Photoshop CS5 used for flat fielding, curves, color correction, saturation adjustments, star shrinking, noise reduction, and high pass filter. HLVG for additional color correction, Carboni Actions for noise reduction and additional saturation adjustments.
Notes	This is a beautiful nebula, particularly when you capture the outer wispy elements. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pull out these outer edges in this image. Its still a pretty good picture, but I'll probably want to re-image this object sometime.