An emission nebula with the resemblance of an animal’s paw print, in the constellation of Scorpius. It is a stellar nursery containing some massive new stars.
The red hue comes from ionised hydrogen atoms.
NGC 6334:
Visual magnitude: +10.0.
Apparent diameter: 40 x 30 arc-min.
Actual diameter: 30 light years.
Distance: 820 light years.
Image:
Exposure: 4 x 4 min ISO 1250.
Date: 2017-08-22.
Location: The Oaks, NSW.
Sky: semi-dark rural sky, clear.
Processing: Canon DPP, Deep Sky Stacker and GIMP.
Cropping: yes.
Gear:
Telescope: Skywatcher ED120 refractor, 840mm focal length, f/7 focal ratio.
Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R.
Polar aligning: QHYCCD PoleMaster.
Guiding: Orion ShortTube 80 OTA, Orion StarShoot camera and PHD2 software.
Camera: Canon EOS 60D.
No filter, no flattener.
Image © R.Powell
Cosmic Focus 
Such a wonderful capture of this great nebula, Roger!
If we to ask the computer to run this nebula forward into time, a few million years from now, it may look still less like a cat’s paw than it does today.
Stars are born, stars evolve, stars die. The more massive the star, the faster it burns up…
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That’s right, Kazia.
Most stuff in the Universe gets recycled. The molecules that our bodies are composed of were all previously located inside at least one star and maybe more.
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True, Roger.
Our Sun eventually will burn out and the Earth will not survive the sun’s expansion into a full-blown red giant star.
In the end, our molecules will flow into space with the atoms in the planet Earth back into the gas and dust it was before.
For a time being let’s look at the night sky as often as we can, our future home. It contains all the wonder what we know.
🙂
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I can think of nothing better, Kazia, than to do just that!
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