Astronomers have captured a captivating image of what seems like a ghostly hand stretching across the cosmos towards a distant spiral galaxy, unveiling a rare cosmic phenomenon.

The Dark Energy Camera, situated on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, snapped the breathtaking picture of “God’s Hand” – a cometary globule located 1,300 light-years away in the Puppis constellation.

Cometary globules, a subclass of Bok globules or dark nebulae, are solitary celestial clouds teeming with dense gas and dust, enveloped by heated, energetic material.

These peculiar structures feature elongated tails akin to comets, yet their origin remains a mystery to astronomers, CNN reported.

The recent image highlights CG 4, one of numerous cometary globules dispersed throughout the Milky Way galaxy, with its distinctive hand-like appearance seemingly reaching towards the distant spiral galaxy ESO 257-19 (PGC 21338), located over 100 million light-years away.

CG 4 boasts a central dusty head resembling a hand, measuring 1.5 light-years across, accompanied by an elongated tail spanning 8 light-years.

Such celestial distances are unimaginable, with a light-year equating to approximately 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers).

Written by B.C. Begley