You can spot the Cocoon Nebula through a 4-inch telescope as a circular blur. Its light equals that of a 7th-magnitude star, but the nebula’s surface brightness is low.

What it shows is the famed Cocoon Nebula, also called IC 5146. What you’re seeing is actually a cluster of young stars called Collinder 470, which is roughly 2,500 light-years away.

The Cocoon Nebula is both a reflection nebula and an emission nebula, Hancock wrote in an email to Space.com, meaning it reflects the light of nearby stars and shines with its own light.

This spectacular image shows the Cocoon Nebula, IC5146, in Cygnus. The blue reflection nebula below the Cocoon is Van den Bergh 147.

Runner-Up: Logan Carpenter – Cocoon Nebula Carpenter’s precise image of the Cocoon Nebula’s comet-like tail, set against a backdrop of hydrogen alpha, secured him second place in this category.

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The star seems to be using these jets to carve out the butterfly-like structures from its cocoon, which are so prominent during the later planetary nebula phase.

Taken by the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory in infrared light (at wavelengths of 70, 250 and 500 microns), this photograph shows stars forming along the dense filaments of gas ...

The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a stunning new photo of infant stars nestled in a glowing cocoon of gas and dust.

Astronomers released a new image of the Orion Nebula on Monday from the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb's infrared cameras caught star-forming clouds and a cocoon of gas 1,350 light-years away ...

The much-anticipated video game designed by Jeppe Carlsen, the brain behind the puzzles in Limbo and Inside, seeks to deliver pleasurable moments of discovery.

(CNN) -- A newly released image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals unprecedented detail within a rare astronomical "butterfly." The intriguing proto-planetary nebula CRL 618 is changing so ...