I asked my family what they thought this picture looked like:
"A dog catching a tennis ball"
"A hand holding a blue ball"
I think it looks like the top of a wizard's staff.
What's fun about these pictures is that we all look at them differently...
This photo has 3x different nebulae that are often photographed individually. I will just mention one or two interesting things about each nebula.
The nebula at the bottom is called the "Flaming Star Nebula." There's a very bright "runaway" star there ("AE Aur") that is lighting up the nebula. "Runaway" stars are moving VERY fast...this one was ejected from two star clusters that collided 2 million years ago. The star, then, is just passing through...in a million years, the Flaming Star Nebula may no longer exist.
The nebula in the center is called the "Tadpole Nebula" because there are a few tadpole shaped dust clouds that look like they are swimming toward the center of the nebula.
The nebula at the top is called the Spider Nebula. Many new stars are being formed here (if you zoom in to the full size image you can see a cluster at the core). It is often pictured with the "Fly Nebula" (in which case the spider eats the fly)... I did not have any more space to fit the "Fly" into the frame here.
Full size image is available here: https://astrob.in/full/g2vl9f/0/
