In today's installment of 'Look at This Cool Thing in Space,' NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day brings us the Dark Doodad Nebula, a cosmic dust cloud that sounds like something a four-year-old would name their pet rock. It's drifting through southern skies, conveniently located for binocular-wielding stargazers in the small constellation Musca, The Fly - because apparently, space needed a fly to go with the Southern Cross.

This interstellar dust cloud is set against rich starfields just south of the Coalsack Nebula, which sounds like a coal mine in space, but is actually another dark nebula. The Dark Doodad stretches about 3 degrees across this telescopic field of view, which is roughly six full moons laid end to end, if you're keeping score at home.

Near its southern tip (upper right, if you're following along), the Dark Doodad is punctuated by the yellowish globular star cluster NGC 4372. This cluster is a background object some 20,000 light-years away, roaming the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. It's only by chance along our line-of-sight to the Dark Doodad - a cosmic coincidence that would be romantic if it weren't just dust and stars.

The Dark Doodad itself is about 700 light-years away and over 30 light-years long, with a well-defined silhouette belonging to the potentially star-forming Musca molecular cloud. Because of course it's a star-forming region; everything in space is either forming stars or dying, with no in-between.

The delightfully alliterative name 'Dark Doodad' was first coined by astro-imager and writer Dennis di Cicco in 1986, while observing Comet Halley from the Australian outback. Apparently, the outback inspires both celestial observation and whimsical naming. Tomorrow's picture will feature 'pixels in space,' which is either a deep philosophical statement about digital imaging or NASA just ran out of ideas. Stay tuned.