A little over 2000 light years away, toward the constellation of Cepheus, is a place where stars are being born. It's a nebula, a gas cloud, and it's called IC 1396. It's monstrous, well over a hundred light years across - even at its tremendous distance, it's wider than six full Moons in our sky. Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsävainio observed IC 1396, making a gorgeous image of it. But he wasn't satisfied just doing that. He'd been playing with making 3D images for some time, and decided this might be a good opportunity to make a model of the structure of the nebula, and then create an animated GIF of it. The results are... well, see for yourself:
Holy. Haleakala! [The filesize is 7Mb, so it may take a while to load.] OK, let me be clear: this is not actually showing you the 3D structure of the nebula. It's ...
