Looking like a giant Exogorth or Space Slug from The Empire Strikes Back leaping out of an asteroid to devour the Millennium Falcon, this object is more commonly known as a "cometary globule" hence its more familiar name of CG4 and it is composed of dust and inonised gas. The Milenium Falcon here is in fact the distant galaxy ESO 257-19 and is many millions of light years further away.
It is also referred to as the Hand of God sometimes and I recon it's a very cool lookin object
Thanks for the responses guys, glad you all seem to have enjoyed the view..seeing creatures and other stuff in nebulae is automatic for me and has become a fetish of mine I think Glad the asteroid worm is obvious to most too...yes didn't think of the Dune worms
Although it did vary somewhat, the seeing was rather ordinary both nights so once again while not toooo bad, the level of detail is annoyingly hinting at what could have been
Looks good Mike. Nice detail in the galaxy dust lanes. An interesting target for sure. Have you considered ramping up the blue a little. The blue stars seem a little muted to me. Nice image all the same.
nice one Mike, probably only a few billion times bigger than the star wars space slug.
I think it only looks like a hand (hand of God) when viewed in xray? - in which case it more likely the hand of God oversized star wars slug puppet sock ...
Hmmm Paulie..I thought I was a nasty bully deserving of severe moderation and you'd never speak to me again ...anyway, all good....As for the blue stars..? Although I never look at other renditions before doing my own processing, a quick peruse of other images of this region seems to suggest that blue in stars, or in the rest of the field for that matter, isn't too strong in the area..? maybe lots of dust? Many renditions seem to be strong in magenta too...but thanks for the suggestion though
Great work Mike That's a wonderful image of this classic cometary globule - one that is not often imaged. The colours are nice and vibrant too!
There are quite a few of these interesting globule structures around Puppis.
Great work Mike That's a wonderful image of this classic cometary globule - one that is not often imaged. The colours are nice and vibrant too!
There are quite a few of these interesting globule structures around Puppis.
Thanks Rolfie I've always loved this dusty structure, I last imaged it back in 2008 with the Starfire and FLI 11002... and APOD seemed to like that rendition
This latest version is higher res but a smaller field of view
Mike
Last edited by strongmanmike; 20-01-2015 at 10:21 PM.
like the sand worms from Arrakis in Dune and the Doomsday Machine from Star Trek
Grazie Leo 
deserving of severe moderation and you'd never speak to me again 
