Excerpts from Giant Cometary Globule CG 4 Image

This excerpt shows a close-up of CG 4 seemingly about to devour the edge-on spiral galaxy ESO 257-19 (PGC 21338). But in reality, this galaxy is more than a hundred million light-years beyond CG 4 and only appears to be close because of a chance alignment.

Near the head of the cometary globule are two young stellar objects (YSOs). YSOs are stars in their early stage of evolution, before they become main-sequence stars, that often exhibit characteristics such as jets, bipolar outflows, protoplanetary discs, and other indicators of a new star being born.