Watch: This nebula 10,000 light-years away looks like a bat
What's the story
Astronomers have spotted a nebula resembling a bat, spreading its wings in deep space. The discovery was made about 10,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellations of Circinus and Norma. The nebula's eerie shape is formed by swirling clouds of gas and dust within a massive stellar nursery. These clouds glow as hydrogen atoms within them are energized by intense radiation from young stars embedded within.
Cosmic features
Dark filaments of interstellar dust can be seen
Dark filaments of interstellar dust can be seen blocking the light of the nebula clouds beyond. These twisting giants are rich with star-forming material from which a new generation of stellar behemoths will be born. The scene is interpreted by some as a giant bat hunting the scrap of shining nebula, visible at the top of the image due to our brain's natural propensity for creating order out of chaos.
Cosmic capture
Image was taken in Chile's Atacama Desert
The stunning deep space collage, which is the size of four full Moons in the night sky, was captured by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The image was taken using the 268MP Omegacam instrument on the 2.6-meter VLT Survey Telescope at ESO's Paranal site in Chile's Atacama Desert. Astronomers used a range of specialized filters to capture light from this ancient nebula during a survey of the Milky Way's galactic plane.