This nebula resembles the silhouette of a wolf or maybe even a wolf. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a new image of this cloud of gas and dust on Thursday.
The dark Wolf Nebula is visible in the sky in the constellation Scorpius, near the center of the Milky Way. It's about 5,300 light-years away and is part of the larger Gum Nebula 55, which is pictured as an area of the sky that spans four full Moon disks. It was presented by the European Southern Observatory for Halloween.
“If anyone thought darkness equaled emptiness, think again,” the publication said, explaining that dark nebulae in space are cold clouds of dust that block light from distant stars behind them. Unlike other types of nebulae, these objects do not emit visible light because dust grains absorb this type of radiation. However, infrared radiation can penetrate through them.
NebulaESO/VPHAS
“The image shows in detail how the dark wolf stands out behind the bright star-shaped clouds behind it. The colorful clouds are mainly composed of hydrogen gas and glow red when excited by intense ultraviolet radiation from newborn stars. “we read.
The image consists of different photos
The image was captured by the VLT Research Telescope (VST), at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The telescope belongs to the Italian National Astrophysical Institute (INAF) and has a special camera adapted to map the sky in the visible spectrum. The image shown has 283 million pixels and is a collection of images taken at different times and with different filters as part of a project called the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), which surveys about 500 million objects in the Milky Way.
ESO has shown that some dark nebulae can be seen with the naked eye. An example is a carbon bag nebula. The Mapuche people, who live in south-central Chile, call this mist “pozoco”, which means water well. In turn, the Incas called this object “yutu”, which refers to a bird that looks like a partridge.
Main image credit: ESO/VPHAS
