uaetodaynews.com — The telescope captured a “bat spreading its wings” in space – video

Astronomers European Southern Observatory captured the glowing “wings” of the enormous bat-shaped nebula RCW 94/95 unfolding in the depths of space some 10,000 light-years from Earth in the constellations Compass and Square.
The contours of the nebula are carved out of swirling clouds of gas and dust within a huge stellar nursery. These clouds glow because the hydrogen atoms in them are excited by powerful radiation from the young, energetic cluster of stars hidden within.
Dark filaments of interstellar dust cut across the scene, blocking light from the nebula’s more distant clouds. These collapsing giants are rich in star-forming material and will eventually give rise to a new generation of massive stars.

Our brain’s habit of finding order in chaos causes many to see a giant bat chasing a shiny piece of nebula at the top of the frame.
In terms of angular size, the image covers an area comparable to four full moons in the sky. The image was taken by the 268-megapixel Omegacam mounted on the 2.6-meter VLT telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) site on Mount Paranal in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
To capture the ancient nebula’s faint glow, astronomers applied a set of specialized filters to view the plane of the Milky Way, then combined the data with infrared observations to highlight the region’s hidden structure.

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Published on: 2025-11-01 20:32:00
Source: naukatv.ru