Wide Angle: The Cat's Paw Nebula
			
		
		
		
			Nebulae are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps 
cats are for getting into 
trouble.  
Still, no known 
cat 
could have created the vast 
Cat's Paw Nebula visible in Scorpius.  
At 5,500 light years distant, Cat's 
Paw is an 
emission nebula with a red color that originates from an abundance of ionized 
hydrogen atoms.  
Alternatively known as the 
Bear Claw Nebula or 
NGC 6334, 
stars nearly ten times the mass of our 
Sun have been born 
there 
in only the past few million years.
Pictured above, 
a wide angle, deep field image of the   
Cat's Paw 
nebula was culled from the second 
Digitized Sky Survey.