creating an element in jquery
===

So, I know how to create an element in jQuery in various ways. But I've never come across this before today:

		var myspacer = $('<div />', {
			"id": "nav-spacer",
			"height": mynav.outerHeight()
		});

Later on in the code, this variable is added to the DOM with jQuery's .before() method. Can somebody explain what's going on here? What kind of object is being created? How does jQuery know how to turn this into an HTML element?

Edit - clarification and grammar