Perfection or Vanity

Far away, in a nebula several million light years away, there were two stars standing out among the other. Their luminosity was sheerly incredible. One of them was obscured by a dark nebula and was illuminating its surroundings like never discovered before. The second one, on the other side of the nebula, was shining blatantly which made it easy to identify as a regular supergiant which was about to blow up in a supernova. The first star was from the beginning on the mysterious one. What was causing this unexpected brightness? Was it the perfect star that was still not seen directly?


Attempt number x to draw a half-way decent-looking nebula. Opinions are very appreciated. Title as well as making were heavily inspired by Dimmu Borgir's song "Perfection or Vanity". I still like that song, although I listened to it in an endless-loop while drawing. lol.


By the way, the bigger the view, the more details you'll notice. That's why I set the image's size to 1600x900, otherwise, dA will rape the quality.


Enjoy

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Edit: I found a way to remove those nasty gradient-steps at the border of the neb. Ergo: they are non-existent anymore.
Stars were completely redone. I didn't feel like making some elaborate star fields last time and just applied that stupid noise-filter. Well, now it's a little more in the shape I want those stars to be

Edit (23 Aug 2009): Sharpened the whole image and, more important, added some depth to it. Took quite a while to get the planets right.