Please note that these are taken over a long time period by large telescopes and are definitely not what you see with a quick naked eye observation of the nebula with a home telescope. I am trying to warn you not to be disappointed when you compare you own observations with professionally taken works by astrophotographers. Here are a few URL s to play with. You can find nice photos of various types of nebulae posted on them. Of the interstellar material, about 99 percent of the interstellar material is gas, about hydrogen and helium with some other stuff in much smaller amounts.
Interstellar dust is a heterogeneous material indeed.
Spectra show that there are some particles of silicate materials such as make up earth rocks, others are made of carbon soot, and many contain aluminum, magnesium, calcium, iron and other materials. Many consist of a core of silicates or carbon which is surrounded by a frozen mantle of water, ammonia, or methane ices. These dust grains are thought to form in the atmospheres of the giant and supergiant stars in the outer atmospheres of cooling gases. Collisions in which other particles stick together complete the layer of ices. The bright nebulae can be further categorized as 1.