Pan across the Cat磗 Paw Nebula NGC 6334, a vast region of star formation. The nebula lies about 5500 light years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius. The whole gas cloud is about 50 light years across. It contains numerous dense regions of gas and dust where stars are forming, and glows pink due to the excitation of hydrogen gas by the radiation from the hot young stars born within it. Imaged by the Wide Field Imager WFI instrument at the 2.2_metre MPG ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.