CG4: the Mouth of the Cosmic Beast

CG4 looks like a monster hand (or mouth) trying to grab a spiral galaxy.
It is commonly referred to as 'God's Hand' or 'Mouth of the Beast', a star-forming region located in the Puppis constellation, about 1,300 light-years from Earth.
It is one of several objects referred to as "cometary globules", because its shape is similar to that of a comet.
It has a dense head formed of gas and dust, which is around 1.5 light-years in diameter, and an elongated faint tail around 8 light-years in length.

CG4, and the nearby cometary globules, generally point away from the Vela Supernova Remnant, located at the center of the Gum Nebula.
The gas in the cloud is heated by nearby young, hot massive stars, causing it to glow in infrared.

The galaxy on the left (ESO 257-19) is huge & very far away (118 million light-years) and is only placed near CG4 by chance superposition.

LHaRGB-image acquired with CHI-1 (Planewave CDK24 telescope and FLI PL09000 camera).

Total integration time 900 minutes
LHaRGB: 18 sub-frames of 300s with each filter (L, H-alpha, R, G and OIII).
Data from 9 one-click observations.