ESO Archives

December 17, 2012December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

The Paranal and the Shadow of the Earth

This beautiful photo, taken by ESO photo ambassador Babak Tafreshi, shows the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope array and VISTA telescope atop the peaks of the Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert. In the distance the Earth’s shadow extends outward toward the horizon, divided from the bluer daytime sky by the dusky pink “Belt of Venus.”

At an altitude of 2,635 meters (8,645 feet) the Paranal looks down onto a sea of clouds covering the Pacific Ocean, visible at right, whose shores lie 12 km in the distance.

Image credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)

November 21, 2012December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Makemake’s Mysteriously Missing Atmosphere

Artist’s impression of the surface of Makemake, a dwarf planet beyond Pluto (ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger)

It turns out there’s no air up there: the distant dwarf planet Makemake is surprisingly lacking in an atmosphere, according to findings made by astronomers using telescopes at ESO’s La Silla and Paranal observatories.

An international team of astronomers used the mountaintop telescopes to observe Makemake as it passed in front of a faint background star in April 2011, a brief stellar occultation that lasted only about a minute. By watching how the starlight was blotted out by Makemake, measurements could be made of the dwarf planet’s size, mass and atmosphere — or, in this case, its lack thereof… a finding which surprised some scientists.

“As Makemake passed in front of the star and blocked it out, the star disappeared and reappeared very abruptly, rather than fading and brightening gradually. This means that the little dwarf planet has no significant atmosphere,” said team leader José Luis Ortiz of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain. “It was thought that Makemake had a good chance of having developed an atmosphere — that it has no sign of one at all shows just how much we have yet to learn about these mysterious bodies.”

First discovered in 2005, Makemake is an icy dwarf planet about 2/3 the diameter of Pluto — and 19 AU further from the Sun (but not nearly as far as the larger Eris, which is over 96 AU away.) It was thought that Makemake might have a tenuous, seasonal atmosphere similar to what has been found on Pluto, but it now appears that it does not… at least not in any large-scale, global form.

Due to its small size, sheer distance and apparent lack of moons, making scientific observations of Makemake has been a challenge for astronomers. The April 2011 occultation allowed measurements to be made — even if only for a minute — that weren’t possible before, including first-ever calculations of the dwarf planet’s density and albedo.

As it turns out, Makemake’s albedo is about 0.77 — comparable to that of dirty snow… a reflectivity higher than Pluto’s but lower than that of Eris. Its density is estimated to be 1.7 ± 0.3 g/cm³, indicating a composition of mostly ice with some rock.

“Our new observations have greatly improved our knowledge of one of the biggest [icy bodies], Makemake — we will be able to use this information as we explore the intriguing objects in this region of space further,” said Ortiz.

New Rogue Planet Found, Closest to our Solar System

This artist’s impression shows the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/P. Delorme/Nick Risinger/R. Saito/VVV Consortium

Rogue planets – also known as free floating planets – are pretty intriguing. They are not orbiting a star but instead are wandering through the galaxy, having been either forcibly ejected from a solar system or having formed very early on in the Universe. While only a handful of these planets have been actually found, astronomers estimate these vagrant worlds could vastly outnumber stars. In fact, it’s been suggested there could be 100,000 times more rogue planets than stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone!

The latest rogue world to be found is exciting in that it is the closest such object to our Solar System so far. At a distance of about 100 light-years, its comparative proximity, along with the absence of a bright star very close to it, has allowed the team to study its atmosphere in great detail. Astronomers say this object gives them a preview of the exoplanets that future instruments will be able to find – and potentially take image of — around stars other than the Sun. But the planet also seems to be loosely tied to a roving group of stars, called the AB Doradus Moving Group.

The new rogue planet, with the ungainly name of CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9 (CFBDSIR2149 for short), was found using the Very Large Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The astronomers, led by Philippe Delorme from the Institut de planétologie et d’astrophysique de Grenoble, CNRS/Université Joseph Fourier, France, are calling the object a rogue planet candidate for now, as they want to study it further to confirm its free-floating status.

Moving star systems are equally intriguing. The AB Doradus Moving Group is the closest such group to our Solar System, and the stars drift through space together in a pack. They are thought to have formed at the same time. If the new rogue planet actually is associated with this moving group, astronomers say it will be possible to deduce much more about it, including its temperature, mass, and what its atmosphere is made of. There remains a small probability that the association with the moving group is by chance.

The link between the new object and the moving group is the vital clue that allows astronomers to find the age of the newly discovered object. Without knowing its age, it’s not possible to know whether it is really a planet, or a brown dwarf, a “failed” star that lack the bulk to trigger the reactions that make stars shine.

This is the first isolated planetary mass object ever identified in a moving group, and the association with this group makes it the most interesting free-floating planet candidate identified so far.

This closeup of an image captured by the SOFI instrument on ESO’s New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory shows the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9 in infrared light. This object, which appears as a faint blue dot at the centre of the picture, is the closest such object to the Solar System. Credit: ESO/P. Delorme.

“Looking for planets around their stars is akin to studying a firefly sitting one centimetre away from a distant, powerful car headlight,” said Delorme. “This nearby free-floating object offered the opportunity to study the firefly in detail without the dazzling lights of the car messing everything up.”

Free-floating objects like CFBDSIR2149 are thought to form either as normal planets that have been booted out of their home systems, or as lone objects like the smallest stars or brown dwarfs. In either case these objects are intriguing — either as planets without stars, or as the tiniest possible objects in a range spanning from the most massive stars to the smallest brown dwarfs.

“These objects are important, as they can either help us understand more about how planets may be ejected from planetary systems, or how very light objects can arise from the star formation process,” says Philippe Delorme. “If this little object is a planet that has been ejected from its native system, it conjures up the striking image of orphaned worlds, drifting in the emptiness of space.”

If CFBDSIR2149 is not associated with the AB Doradus Moving Group, the astronomers say it is trickier to be sure of its nature and properties, and it may instead be characterized as a small brown dwarf. Both scenarios represent important questions about how planets and stars form and behave.

“Further work should confirm CFBDSIR2149 as a free-floating planet,” said Delorme. “This object could be used as a benchmark for understanding the physics of any similar exoplanets that are discovered by future special high-contrast imaging systems, including the SPHERE instrument that will be installed on the VLT.”

This video shows an artist’s impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9. In the first part of the sequence the planet appears as a dark disc in visible light, silhouetted against the star clouds of the Milky Way. This is the closest such object to the Solar System and the most exciting candidate free-floating planet found so far. It does not orbit a star and hence does not shine by reflected light; the faint glow it emits can only be detected in infrared light. In the final sequence we see an infrared view of the object with the central parts of the Milky Way as seen by the VISTA infrared survey telescope as background. The object appears blueish in this near-infrared view because much of the light at longer infrared wavelengths is absorbed by methane and other molecules in the planet’s atmosphere. In visible light the object is so cool that it would only shine dimly with a deep red colour when seen close-up.

Read the team’s research paper here (pdf).

Source: ESO

November 12, 2012December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Astrophoto: Deep Sky Treasury

The view of the Paranal Observatory: Credit: ESO/Babak Tafreshi

A new image captures the stunning view of the night sky over ESO’s Paranal Observatory, with a treasury of deep-sky objects. The image was taken by Babak Tafreshi, an astronomer, journalist and director of The World at Night (TWAN).

It shows the Carina Nebula, glowing intensely red in the middle of the image. Below Carina is the the Wishing Well Cluster (NGC 3532); then to the right is the Lambda Centauri Nebula (IC 2944) – which is also called the Running Chicken Nebula. Above this nebula and slightly to the left is the Southern Pleiades (IC 2632), an open cluster of stars that is similar to its more familiar northern namesake.

In the foreground, is three of the four Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).

See more information about this image from ESO.

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November 12, 2012December 23, 2015 by John Williams

A Primer on Cosmic Sprinklers

The planetary nebula Fleming 1, as seen with ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Credit: ESO/H. Boffin

The neat thing about planetary nebulae is that they are like snowflakes: no two are quite the same. Some look like pools of hot water, some look like glowing eyes in the night and others, like this image of Fleming 1, have twin jets of material spiraling outward from the center resembling a huge cosmic sprinkler.

And for the first time, astronomers with the European Southern Observatory have paired new Very Large Telescope images of Fleming 1 with computer models to explain how the intricate dance between two dead stars result in these bizarre nebulae that appear to be flinging material out into space. The team’s findings were published in the November 9, 2012 issue of the journal Science.

“The origin of the beautiful and intricate shapes of Fleming 1 and similar objects has been controversial for many decades,” says team leader Henri Boffin in a press release. “Astronomers have suggested a binary star before, but it was always thought that in this case the pair would be well separated, with an orbital period of tens of years or longer. Thanks to our models and observations, which let us examine this unusual system in great detail and peer right into the heart of the nebula, we found the pair to be several thousand times closer.”

The team using ESO’s VLT to study Fleming 1’s central star, toward the constellation Centaurus, found not one but two white dwarfs at its core. The two white-hot dead stars slightly smaller than our Sun circle each other every 1.2 days. Binary stars have been found at the heart of planetary nebulae before, but two white dwarfs circling each other is very rare, say the scientists.

Planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. Astronomers in the eighteenth century likened these glowing bubbles of light to planets because they resembled the distant orbs Uranus and Neptune in their small telescopes. Planetary nebulae are actually a brief stage at the end of a sun-like star’s life. As a star with a mass up to eight times that of our Sun nears the end of its life, it sloughs off its outer shells in an immense bubble. As more and more mass is lost to space, the white-hot stellar core is exposed. This white dwarf gives off a stiff solar wind that pushes the bubble ever wider. Blistering ultraviolet radiation from the dead star excites atoms in the expanding cloud causing it to glow.

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This animation shows how the two stars at the heart of a planetary nebula like Fleming 1 can control the creation of the spectacular jets of material ejected from the object. Credit:ESO/L. Calçada. Music: delmo “acoustic”

Gazing into a planetary nebulae rarely reveals a quiet environment. Complex knots and filaments form intricate patterns. For cosmic sprinklers like Fleming 1 material seems to be shooting from both poles with an S-shaped pattern between the star and the outermost wavefront. Scientists say that as the stars aged, they expanded and one sucked material from its companion; a kind of starry vampire, forming a spinning disk of material. As they rapidly orbited each other, the pair began to wobble like a spinning top, a type of motion called precession. The team’s study shows that precessing accretion disks within binary star systems form the symmetrical arcs of material in planetary nebulae like Fleming 1.

The VLT images revealed even more surprises about Fleming 1, named after Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming in 1910. Scientists found a knotted ring of material within the inner nebula of Fleming 1. Scientists look for these rings as a sign of a binary system.

Source: European Southern Observatory

October 24, 2012December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Zoom Through 84 Million Stars in Gigantic New 9-Gigapixel Image

The image above is a portion of a new gigantic nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory of the central portion of the Milky Way Galaxy. The resolution of this image is so great, that if it was printed out in the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 meters long and 7 meters tall! Click on the image to have access to an interactive, zoomable view of the more than 84 million stars that astronomers have now catalogued from this image. The huge dataset contains more than ten times more stars than previous studies and astronomers say it is a major step forward for the understanding of our home galaxy.

“By observing in detail the myriads of stars surrounding the centre of the Milky Way we can learn a lot more about the formation and evolution of not only our galaxy, but also spiral galaxies in general,” said Roberto Saito from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de Valparaíso, lead author of the study.

UPDATE: The image is also available on Gigapan, which provides a very smooth interface in which to explore and zoom around the image.

The dataset contains a treasure trove of information about the structure and content of the Milky Way. One interesting result revealed in the new data is the large number of faint red dwarf stars, which are prime candidates to search for small exoplanets using the transit method. Using this dataset, astronomers can also study the different physical properties of stars such as their temperatures, masses and ages.

To help analyze this huge catalogue, the brightness of each star is plotted against its color for about 84 million stars to create a color–magnitude diagram. This plot contains more than ten times more stars than any previous study and it is the first time that this has been done for the entire bulge.

This infrared view of the central part of the Milky Way from the VVV VISTA survey has been labelled to show a selection of the many nebulae and clusters in this part of the sky. Credit: ESO/VVV Consortium, Acknowledgement: Ignacio Toledo, Martin Kornmesser

“Each star occupies a particular spot in this diagram at any moment during its lifetime,” said Dante Minniti, also from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile, co-author of the study. “Where it falls depends on how bright it is and how hot it is. Since the new data gives us a snapshot of all the stars in one go, we can now make a census of all the stars in this part of the Milky Way.”

Getting such a detailed view of the central region of our galaxy is not an easy task.

“Observations of the bulge of the Milky Way are very hard because it is obscured by dust,” said Minniti. “To peer into the heart of the galaxy, we need to observe in infrared light, which is less affected by the dust.”

The team used ESO’s 4.1-metre Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), which has a wide field of view. This new image is just one of six public surveys carried out with VISTA.

“One of the other great things about the VVV survey is that it’s one of the ESO VISTA public surveys. This means that we’re making all the data publicly available through the ESO data archive, so we expect many other exciting results to come out of this great resource,” said Saito.

Source: ESO

October 16, 2012December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Next Door Neighbors? Earth-Sized Planet Discovered in Nearest Star System to Us

Artist’s impression of the planet around Alpha Centauri B. Credit: ESO

Artist’s impression of the planet around Alpha Centauri B. Credit: ESO

Astronomers have discovered an enticing new planet that could be considered our next-door neighbor. The planet is orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the closest system to our own, just 4.3 light years away — and the planet has a mass about the same as Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a sun-like star. While this planet is likely too hot to contain life as we know it, the star system could possibly host other worlds that could be habitable, researchers from the European Southern Observatory at La Silla say.

“This result represents a major step towards the detection of Earth twins in the immediate vicinity of the Sun,” the team wrote in their paper.

“This is the first planet with a mass similar to Earth ever found around a star like the Sun. Its orbit is very close to its star and it must be much too hot for life as we know it,” said Stéphane Udry from the Geneva Observatory, a co-author of the paper that will be published in Nature on Oct. 17, and member of the team that used the HARPS instrument to find the planet. “But it may well be just one planet in a system of several. Our other HARPS results, and new findings from Kepler, both show clearly that the majority of low-mass planets are found in such systems.”

The planet is called Alpha Centauri Bb and it whips around its star every 3.2 days, orbiting at a distance of just 6 million kilometers (3.6 million miles), closer than Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. (Earth orbits at a comfortable 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) from the Sun.) So it is likely very hot and covered with molten rock, the researchers say.

Many astronomers have thought that the Alpha Centauri system would be a perfect candidate to host Earth-sized worlds. In fact, in 2008, a team of astronomers ran computer simulations of the system’s first 200 million years, and in each instance, despite different parameters, multiple terrestrial planets formed around the star. In every case, at least one planet turned up similar in size to the Earth, and in many cases this planet fell within the star’s habitable zone.

But while astronomers have looked for years, previous searches of planets in the Alpha Centauri system came up empty.

Until now.

“Our observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument and have revealed a tiny, but real, signal from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.2 days,” says Xavier Dumusque (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal), lead author of the paper. “It’s an extraordinary discovery and it has pushed our technique to the limit!”

The European team detected the planet by using the radial velocity method — by picking up the tiny wobbles in the motion of the star Alpha Centauri B created by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet. The effect is extremely small, as it causes the star to move back and forth by no more than 51 centimeters per second (1.8 km/hour). The team said this is the highest precision ever achieved using this method.

Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is actually a triple star — a system consisting of two stars similar to the Sun orbiting close to each other, designated Alpha Centauri A and B, and a more distant and faint red component known as Proxima Centauri.

Alpha Centauri B is very similar to the Sun but slightly smaller and less bright. The orbit of Alpha Centauri A is hundreds of times further away from the planet, but it would still be a very brilliant object in the planet’s skies.

A wide-field view of the sky around Alpha Centauri was created from photographic images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The star appears so big just because of the scattering of light by the telescope’s optics as well as in the photographic emulsion. Credit: ESO

The first exoplanet around a Sun-like star was found by the same team back in 1995 and there are now 843 Exoplanets with the addition of Alpha Centauri Bb. Most are much bigger than Earth, and many are as big as Jupiter. The previous closest exoplanet was Epsilon Eridani b, 10.4 light years away.

The challenge astronomers now face is to detect and characterize a planet of mass comparable to the Earth that is orbiting in the habitable zone around another star. The first step has now been taken, the team says.

“This result represents a major step,” said Dumusque. “We live in exciting times!”

So, how long would it take for us to get to this planet? Using current technology, our slowest mode of space transportation, ion drive propulsion, it would take 81,000 years. Using the speeds of one of the fastest spacecraft (Helios 2) and traveling at a constant speed of 240,000 km/hr, it would take about 19,000 years (or over 600 generations) to travel the 4.3 light years.

Read the team’s paper (PDF)

Source: ESO

October 10, 2012December 23, 2015 by John Williams

Dying Star Blows Surprising Spiral Bubble

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, astronomers found an unexpected spiral structure surrounding the red giant star R Sculptoris shown here in this visualization. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Sometimes what we can’t see is just as surprising as what lies directly in front of us. This especially holds true in a new finding from the astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/sumbillimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile. A surprising and strange spiral structure surrounding the old star R Sculptoris is likely being created by an unseen companion, say astronomers.

The team using ALMA, the most powerful millimeter/submillimeter telescope in the world, mapped the spiral structure in three-dimensions. The astronomers say this is the first time a spiral of material, with a surrounding shell, has been observed. They report their findings in the journal Nature this week.

“We’ve seen shells around this kind of star before,” says lead author Matthias Maercker of the European Southern Observatory and Argelander Institute for Astronomy, University of Bonn, Germany in a press release. “But this is the first time we’ve ever seen a spiral of material coming out from a star, together with a surrounding shell.”

Scientists, using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope found a similar spiral, but without a surrounding shell, while observing the star LL Pegasi. Unlike the new ALMA observations, however, the astronomers could not create a three-dimensional map of the structure. Hubble observations saw the dust while ALMA detected the molecular emission.

ALMA detects the warm glow of carbon monoxide molecules in the far infrared through the multimeter wavelengths allowing astronomers to map the gas emissions surrounding the star in high-resolution. The team believes the strangely shaped bubble of material was probably created by an invisible companion star orbiting the red giant.

As stars like our Sun reach the ends of their lives, they become red giants. Swollen and cool, the stars begin a short-lived helium burning phase. During this time, the stars slough off large amounts of their mass in a dense stellar wind forming an expanding glowing shell around the stellar core. The pulses occur about every 10,000 to 50,000 years and last just a few hundred years. New observations of R Sculptoris show a pulse event rocked the star about 1,800 years ago and lasted for about 200 years. Computer simulations following the evolution of a binary system fit the new ALMA observations, according to the astronomers.

“It’s a real challenge to describe theoretically all the observed details coming from ALMA,” says co-author Shazrene Mohamed, of Argelander Institute for Astronomy in Bonn, Germany and South African Astronomical Observatory. “But our computer models show that we really are on the right track. ALMA is giving us new insight into what’s happening in these stars and what might happen to the Sun in a few billion years from now.”

A wide field view of the red giant variable star R Sculptoris. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

R Sculptoris is considered by astronomers to be an asymptotic giant branch, or AGB, star. With masses between 0.8 and 8 solar masses, they are cool red giants with a tiny central core of carbon and oxygen surrounded by a burning shell of helium and hydrogen burning. Eventually, our Sun will evolve into an AGB star. The glowing shell is made up of gas and dust, material that will be used for making future stars with their retinue of planets and moons and even the building blocks of life.

“In the near future, observations of stars like R Sculptoris with ALMA will help us to understand how the elements we are made up of reached places like the Earth. They also give us a hint of what our own star’s far future might be like,” says Maercker.

This new video shows a series of slices through the data, each taken at a slightly different frequency. These reveal the shell around the star, appearing as a circular ring, that seems to gets bigger and then smaller, as well as a clear spiral structure in the inner material that it best seen about half-way through the video sequence.

Source: European Southern Observatory

Small image caption: What appears to be a thin spiral pattern winding away from a star is shown in this remarkable picture from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows one of the most perfect geometrical forms created in space. It captures the formation of an unusual pre-planetary nebula, known as IRAS 23166+1655, around the star LL Pegasi (also known as AFGL 3068) in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse). Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble

October 1, 2012December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Watch Live: A Day in the Life of the Very Large Telescope

Ever wonder what takes place on a daily basis at one of the premier ground-based observatories? The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and on October 5, 2012, they will host a free, live event on the web, “A Day in the Life of ESO.” There will be live observations from ESO’s flagship observatory, the Very Large Telescope (VLT), on Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert, as well as talks from astronomers at ESO’s Headquarters in Germany. Members of the public are invited to ask questions in advance of the event, or during the stream, by Facebook, Twitter, and email.

The webcast will be streamed through Livestream.

For the first time in ESO’s history, the VLT will be pointed towards an object in the sky selected by members of the public — the Thor’s Helmet Nebula (NGC 2359). This striking nebula was selected as part of the Choose What the VLT Observes competition. Brigitte Bailleul, from France, won the Tweet Your Way to the VLT! competition, and will travel to the Paranal Observatory in Chile to help make the observations. The live link to Paranal will show the observations and the telescopes on the mountaintop, in the stunning landscape of the Atacama Desert, letting viewers join Brigitte on her trip of a lifetime.

The webcast will run from 9:00 to 15:00 UTC on October 5. It will be hosted by astronomer — and host of the ESOcasts — “Dr J” — Dr. Joe Liske, from ESO. There will also be talks from astronomers at ESO’s Headquarters in Germany, on topics ranging from ESO’s state-of-the-art telescopes, via the latest news from the frontiers of astronomy, to what the life of an astronomer is like. Throughout the day there will be question and answer sessions, and the chance to test your ESO knowledge in a quiz to win some astronomical prizes.

Members of the public are invited to ask questions about the activities at the Paranal Observatory, the talks of the day, or general questions about ESO. You can send us your questions before the event, or during the webcast, in English in the following ways:

Send a tweet @ESO, also using the hashtag #ESO50years.

Write a question on your Facebook wall in which you tag ESO’s Facebook page.

Send an email to [email protected] with the subject ESO50years. Optionally, please include your name and country.

See this ESO webpage for more info and schedule of the webcast.

September 26, 2012December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Take a Gander at a Cosmic Gull

The head and “eye” of the Seagull Nebula (ESO)

This colorful new image from ESO’s La Silla Observatory highlights the heart of a shining stellar nursery located between the constellations Monoceros and Canis Major. Officially named Sharpless 2-292, the cloud of gas and dust forms the “head” of the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) and gets its glow from the energy emitted by the young, bright star within its “eye”.

A wide-angle image of the Seagull Nebula shows the soaring birdlike shape that gives it its nickname. The cloud seen above forms the gull’s head.

A wide-field view of the Seagull Nebula from the ESO’s Digitized Sky Survey 2 (ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin)

The wings of this gull span an impressive 100 light-years from tip to tip. A birthplace for new stars, the nebula is located within our galaxy about 3,700 light-years away.

For an idea of how far that is, if the distance between the Sun and Earth were scaled down to 1 inch (2.5 cm) and you were standing in New York City, the stars in the Seagull Nebula would be in Paris, France (considering the most direct flight route.)

Powerful radiation from young stars causes the surrounding hydrogen gas to glow with a red color. Light from the hot blue-white stars also gets scattered off tiny dust particles in the nebula to create a blue haze.