The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released the image on Thursday to mark the occasion The sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the institute.
The nebula was imaged earlier this year by ESO’s Very Large Telescope, one of the largest in the world, located in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
The image shows the nebula in a wide-field sky view.
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ESO/BusinessInsider.com
Nebulae are the places where new stars form. A dense cloud of cosmic dust and gas is the perfect breeding ground for bright new stars, many of which can be seen near the top of the cloud in the image above.
As indicated in the attachment press releaseThe conical nebula owes its shape to the star at its tip, which, during its formation, belched out gas and dust, forming something like a column of compacted dust.
The Cone Nebula is about 2,500 light-years from Earth, and is relatively close to us, making it easy to observe.
To find the nebula, the scientists pointed their telescopes toward the constellation of Monoceros (the Unicorn), about halfway between the stars Betelgeuse and Procyon.
The Cone Nebula can be seen at the end of the constellation of the Unicorn.
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ESO/BusinessInsider.com
The constellation of the unicorn appears in the winter sky from the northern hemisphere.
The ESO Very Large Telescope is one of the largest telescopes in the world.
Author: Marian Guino
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