NGC6334 Cat Paws Nebula

NGC 6334 (Cat's Paw Nebula) is a massive emission nebula and star-forming region located in the constellation Scorpius and can be found 3° to the west-northwest of the bright star Lambda Scorpii. This structure is located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, at a distance of approximately 5.5 thousand light-years from the Sun.

This nebula is a high mass filamentary cloud structure spanning about 320 ly. In the visible part of the spectrum, NGC 6334 emits mainly in red (from hydrogen atoms) and blue (from oxygen atoms). The interior is heavily obscured by interstellar dust, with clumps ranging up to 3,000 M_☉ in mass. Although there is pervasive star formation throughout, several embedded star-forming regions have been identified from infrared and radio emissions. Four of these sites have formed H II regions. X-ray sources within the nebula show the presence of ten distinct stellar clusters, most of which are associated with already identified infrared sources and H II regions.