Located in the constellation of Scorpius, the Cat’s Paw Nebula resembles a faint, luminous paw-print on the sky. Deep images reveal that the nebula is about a degree across in the sky. At a distance of about 5500 light-years away it is a truly vast structure spanning almost 100 light-years across. The sculpted gases of NGC 6334 are illuminated by the light of numerous powerful stars, some exceeding 10 solar masses. The two brilliant blue stars in the upper left are Lambda and Kappa Scorpii. Many of these luminous hot stars are surprisingly not visible because they lie within the dusty plane of our galaxy. At infrared wavelengths the numerous hot stars are revealed and the nature of this object as a region of massive star formation becomes clear. In the past decade water masers, molecular outflows, and x-ray sources have provided direct evidence of clusters of protostars within NGC 6334. The nebula was discovered by John Herschel in 1837, and the brief and uninformative description in his Cape Observations catalog is a testament to its faintness. The ruddy hue of this complex is the result of the absorption of blue light by the ubiquitous dust clouds along our line of sight in the plane of the Milky Way. The red, intricate bubble making up the left paw print is particularly striking and is most likely either a star expelling large amounts of matter at high speed as it nears the end of its life or the remnant of a recent supernova.

Located near the famous "Cat Paw" nebula (NGC 6334), the Stellar Cluster Pismis 24 lies at the core of NGC 6357. Its stars include some of the most massive stellar behemoths known. One of the brightest stars in the cluster, Pismis 24-1, was thought possibly to be the most massive on record, approaching 300 solar masses, until it was discovered by the Hubble Telescope to be a triple star, with large components exceeding 100 solar masses. Several of the other central stars also exceed 100 solar masses. The nebulosity visible in the image shows the effects of intense radiation which has sculpted the clouds into curious shapes. Massive protostars, invisible to optical telescopes, lie hidden within the gas and dust of the region.