The brightest star inside the filamented blue box is HD 56925, a Wolf-Rayet star well on its way to blowing up as a supernova. A Wolf-Rayet is a very large (10-80 solar masses) star that has become unstable in its advanced age. W-R stars burn very hot on their surfaces, as hot as 50,000 C. In this image, HD 56925 ionizes the local gas, here mostly hydrogen (reddish) and oxygen (bluish). The star has also blown out a bubble around itself, hence the box. There is much more to this nebula than a hot star in a box, though. At least some of the gas has been expelled from the star itself, while some of it is just interstellar gas that HD 56925's hot stellar wind has stirred up and energized.
This data is 9 hours of Ha and 7 hours of OIII with a 17" CDK and SBIG STXL 11002 through Astrodon filters, gathered by MPAstro in Australia.
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