But what's giving it it's seemingly clear cutoff boundary? I have trouble imagining anything in the nothingness of space taking the role of the forces that shape our atmospheric clouds. It feels a bit as if it was some arbitrary artistic decision like that 2001 slit scan or the Solaris ocean. Then on the other hand of course it's amongst the few most "artistic" ones picked from all those super tiny projection viewports we have taken from the sphere of view directions, so perhaps we should not be all that surprised. It's not quite the level of unlikely discovering a planet populated by mattresses would be.

There are lots of forces at play! The article mentions some of them. Structures are shaped not just by gravity, but by electromagnetism, starlight, supernovae, and more.