This photo centers on the Tulip Nebula (SH2-101), an HII emission region in Cygnus 6,000 light-years from Earth, but that’s not nearly as cool as what lies near it.
Just to the right of the nebula but over 1,200 light years further away lies the most random star ever- HD226868. I’ve put an arrow pointing to this star on the second image. This blue giant is very different from any other star around it- it orbits a black hole about 21 times more massive than the Sun, at a distance of only 0.2 AU. That’s closer than Mercury is to the Sun.
The star is so close that the black hole is sucking matter away from said star, forming a ring of matter around the black hole called an accretion disk. This matter is heated to millions of degrees, causing it to glow brightly in X-rays, which is how the black hole was discovered. A pair of jets oriented perpendicular to the disk are shooting out matter at close to the speed of light away from the black hole, causing a massive shockwave that can be seen from Earth. This wave is quite faint in my photo so I’ve outlined it in blue on the second image.
JML Astrophotos 