Like an ominous fog swirling around a street lamp, a nebula 1,499 light-years away in the constellation Orion burns dimly, illuminated by hot, massive stars embedded inside the gas cloud.

The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image of NGC 1999, also known as the Keyhole nebula, back in 1999.

The creepy dark shape at the center of the image is actually a dim cloud of gas and dust that astronomers believe is a nursery for newborn stars.