This beautiful creation seen above is called the IC 2944, also known as the Running Chicken Nebula.... I don't know, I don't see any kind of resemblance of a chicken. Maybe I can see a beak on the reddish-orangeish part of the emission nebula to the left of the center of the picture and the eyes are the darker portions above and to either side of the beak... Well at least that is my interpretation of it. Anyways, this image was taken in Australia in the Siding Spring Observatory where the picture was processed and given colors.
If you look near the right of the center of the image, you will see a couple of small (compared to the rest of the nebula), dark clouds. Those are called molecular clouds, which are clouds made up of, you guessed it, molecular gas and interplanetary dust. Theses clouds prevent us from seeing other star behind them while as you can see with the nebula surrounding it, you can at least see some stars behind them. These molecular clouds are actually called Thackeray's Globules, or more conveniently, the eggs. These eggs are possible sites of gravitational condensation, which is a primary step of forming stars. The problem about these eggs, is that because they are moving rapidly away from the rest of the nebula due to the radiation of nearby stars, the clouds are actually being shredded apart, decreasing their chance of forming a star.
This whole complex region of gases, reflecting dust and massive stars are all part of an open cluster called Colinder 249 which spans about 70 light-years and is around 6,000 light-years away from us.
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