The Spider and The Fly

Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer ( Auriga ). The spider -shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417 , while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula. About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.