Soul Nebula

The Soul Nebula (Westerhout 5), like its companion Heart Nebula is a stellar nursery where young hot stars are ionizing the surrounding gas and dust, causing them to glow. Stellar winds blow against the surrounding material, sculpting the nebula's complex shape. It is about 6,500 light-years from Earth and spans about 100 light-years across. It is also sometimes called the Baby Nebula because of the resemblance to a human fetus. The image here is formed using the Hubble SHO palette combining the emission lines from sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen.

If you click on the above image to get a larger version and zoom in, you can see a small dark region in the upper center of the image called a Bok globule (named after astronomer Bart Bok). Such regions are dense, cool, molecular clouds formed by gravitational compaction. It may be that further collapse results in them turning on to become star-forming regions as well.