Jellyfish Nebula

This was the longest stack in the gallery at 130 minutes. The bright arc at the left is the jellyfish's bell, while much fainter filaments trail away from it into the surrounding star field.

IC 443 is not a calm cloud where stars are forming. It is an expanding supernova remnant: the debris and shock wave left after a massive star exploded. NASA's X-ray observations suggest the blast also left behind a rapidly spinning neutron star.

Knowing that changes the photograph for me. The soft red curve looks delicate, but it is the visible edge of an enormous stellar wreck about 5,000 light-years away.