The delightful Dark Doodad Nebula drifts through southern skies, a tantalizing target for binoculars in the constellation Musca, The Fly. The dusty cosmic cloud is seen against rich starfields just south of the prominent Coalsack Nebula and the Southern Cross. Stretching for about 3 degrees across this scene the Dark Doodad seems punctuated at its southern tip (lower left) by globular star cluster NGC 4372. Of course NGC 4372 roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy, a background object some 20,000 light-years away and only by chance along our line-of-sight to the Dark Doodad. The Dark Doodad's well defined silhouette belongs to the Musca molecular cloud, but its better known alliterative moniker was first coined by astro-imager and writer Dennis di Cicco in 1986 while observing comet Halley from the Australian outback. The Dark Doodad is around 700 light-years distant and over 30 light-years long (text adapted from APOD). Full resolution image shown at about 75% of original resolution. Apo TEC140 (140/f7.2) - FLI Proline 16803 - 2 panels mosaic, total L (440m) R (300m) G (300m) B (300m) - Warrumbungle Observatory, Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia
The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs through this complex and beautiful skyscape. At the northwestern edge of the constellation Vela (the Sails) the telescopic frame is about 4 degrees wide, centered on the brightest glowing filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant, an expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the supernova explosion that created the Vela remnant reached Earth about 11,000 years ago. In addition to the shocked filaments of glowing gas, the cosmic catastrophe also left behind an incredibly dense, rotating stellar core, the Vela Pulsar. Some 800 light-years distant, the Vela remnant is likely embedded in a larger and older supernova remnant, the Gum Nebula (text adapted from APOD). Apo TEC140 (140/f7.2) - FLI Proline 16803 - 4 panels mosaic, total Ha (1440m) OIII (1200m) R (480m) G (480m) B (360m) - Warrumbungle Observatory, Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia
Driven by the explosion of a massive star, supernova remnant Puppis A is blasting into the surrounding interstellar medium about 7,000 light-years away. The expanding shock waves from that explosion are heating up the dust and gas clouds surrounding the supernova, causing them to glow and creating the beautiful red cirrus we see scattered around the center of the image. Much of the material from that original star was violently thrown out into space. However, some of the material remained in an incredibly dense object called a neutron star. This particular neutron star (too faint to be seen in this image) is moving inexplicably fast: over 3 million miles per hour! Astronomers are perplexed over its absurd speed, and have nicknamed the object, the “Cosmic Cannonball." Some of the teal-colored gas and dust in the image is from yet another ancient supernova, the Vela supernova remnant. That explosion happened around 12,000 years ago and was four times closer to us than Puppis A. If you had X-ray vision like the comic book hero Superman, both of these remnants would be among the largest and brightest objects you would see in the sky. On the top of the image the little bluish glare is vdBH15. (Text adapted from APOD and "Star explosion leaves behind a rose" ScienceDaily, 12 Dec. 2011, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Many thanks to Sakib Rasool for suggesting me this interesting target. Apo TEC140 (140/f7.2) - FLI Proline 16803 - Ha (540m) OIII (540m) L (180m) R (70m) G (80m) B (60m) - Warrumbungle Observatory, Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia
