ESO astronomers have released an absolutely beautiful image snapped by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) of the Sh2-284 nebula.
Sh2-284 is located approximately 15,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Monoceros.
Also known as LBN 983, this nebula is teeming with protostars, as gas and dust within it clumps together to form new stars.
If you take a look at the cloud as a whole, you might be able to make out the face of a cat, smiling down from the sky.
“The Sh2-284 stellar nursery is a vast region of dust and gas and its brightest part, visible in this image, is about 150 light-years across,” the ESO astronomers said.
“Nestled in the center of the brightest part of the nebula — right under the ‘cat’s nose’ — is a cluster of young stars known as Dolidze 25, which produces large amounts of strong radiation and winds.”
“The radiation is powerful enough to ionize the hydrogen gas in the cloud, thereby producing its bright orange and red colors.”
“It’s in clouds like this that the building blocks for new stars reside.”
“The winds from the central cluster of stars push away the gas and dust in the nebula, hollowing out its center.”
“As the winds encounter denser pockets of material, these offer more resistance meaning that the areas around them are eroded away first.”
“This creates several pillars that can be seen along the edges of Sh2-284 pointing at the center of the nebula, such as the one on the right-hand side of the frame.”
“While these pillars might look small in the image, they are in fact several light-years wide and contain vast amounts of gas and dust out of which new stars form.”
This image of Sh2-284 was created using data from ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at Paranal Observatory in Chile.
It was taken as part of the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), which has studied some 500 million objects in our Milky Way Galaxy.
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