15 Years of Very Large Telescope Celebrated With New Image of Stellar Nursery IC 2944

Posted on May 25, 2013

ESO is celebrating 15 years of its Very Large Telescope with this new image of IC 2944, a stellar nursery. IC 2944 appears as the softly glowing pink background in the above image, which is the sharpest view of the object ever taken from the ground. IC 2944 is about 6500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur).

IC 2944 composed mostly of hydrogen gas, which glows in a shade of red, due to the intense radiation from many brilliant newborn stars. The dark clots of opaque dust in the image are called Bok globules. They were named after Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok. The Bok globules in IC 2944 are named Thackeray Globules after English astronomer A. David Thackeray.

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