APOD 2.5: The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic Cloud

The dark object to the right of the image looks like a seahorse, but it is actually a pillar of smokey dust about 20 light years long. the dust structure occurs in our neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud, in a star forming region near the expansive Tarantula Nebula. near the "neck" of the "seahorse" is NGC 2074.  The color image was taken in 2008 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in honor of Hubble's 100,000th trip around the Earth.