The ghostly blue cloud seems to form an outstretched thumb and fingers grasping a burning lump of coal.
This astonishing image was taken by Nasa's Chandra X-ray observatory, which is orbiting 360 miles above the Earth's surface.
It recalls those of the Helix planetary nebula, whose blue centre surrounded by white clouds earned it the nickname 'the eye of God'.
The hand was created when a star exploded in a supernova, creating a rapidly-spinning 12-mile-wide star called a pulsar, which is deep inside the white blob at the hand's wrist.
The pulsar is spewing out enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy, creating a dust and gas cloud so wide that it would take a light beam 150 years to cross from side to side.
The red disc is a separate cloud of gas. The fingers are thought to have been created as the energy passed from the pulsar to this gas cloud.Nasa scientists estimate the moment depicted here actually happened 17,000 years ago.
It has taken since then for the X-rays, travelling at 670million mph, to reach Earth.
