For Years I've been fascinated by space, as a VFX artist it's the closest thing we have to observing epic film effects in real life. Every star, nebula or galaxy represents incredible pyrotechnics happening right in front of our eyes… albeit a few million years late some of the time. As an example, this is a picture I took a few years ago of M27, also known as the ‘dumbbell nebula’. This is the result of a supernova, a gigantic explosion in space - throwing off matter, the red stuff is mostly hydrogen gas, the greenish stuff is oxygen.
