The outline of a nebula bat formed from glowing interstellar clouds (Image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2)
Astronomers have captured the glowing “wings” of a vast nebula shaped like a bat, unfurling in deep space about 10,000 light-years from Earth in the constellations Circinus and Norma, just in time for Halloween!
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Dark filaments of interstellar dust thread through the nebula scene, 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. Our brain’s natural propensity for creating order out of chaos causes some to interpret the scene as a colossal bat hunting the scrap of shining nebula visible at the top of the image.
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The striking deep space collage — spanning the equivalent of four full moons in the night sky — was captured using the 268-megapixel Omegacam instrument mounted on the 2.6-meter VLT Survey Telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal site in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
A widefield view of the nebula bat hunting the southern skies. (Image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2)
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Astronomers used a range of specialized filters to capture the ancient nebula’s light during a survey of the Milky Way’s galactic plane, which was then combined with infrared observations to highlight the region’s hidden structure.
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The ESO released the new photo of the bat nebula on Oct. 31.
Editor’s Note: If you would like to share your own deep space astrophotography with Space.com’s readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
