Lost in a Giant Stellar Nursery: Nebula IC 2948 in Centaur | ESO

Lost in a Giant Stellar Nursery: Nebula IC 2948 in Centaur | ESO

Do you feel lost looking at this picture? Exploring the gas cloud known as IC 2948 means finding your way across countless nascent stars born in this enormous stellar nursery. And yet, this is just a snippet of a much larger object—the Running Chicken Nebula. This nebula spans an area on the night sky close to 25 full moons, and yet, the area you see here is not even a third of a full moon. Obtaining such a detailed snippet of the nebula was possible thanks to a 1.5-billion-pixel image taken by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), hosted and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Located in the constellation of the Centaur (Centaurus), the Running Chicken Nebula is a labyrinth of gas, dust and young stars whose highly intense radiation erodes away the surrounding material. The gas cloud IC2948 is the brightest region of the nebula. Here, we find creeping dark clouds, shaped like open hands about to grab their surrounding blooming stars. 

First discovered more than a century ago, this gas cloud is helping us understand how stars form and behave during their infancy. To spot IC 2948 within the much larger Running Chicken Nebula, locate the chicken’s rear end (or its head, as some people claim). In your search, you may come across other areas like the stunning GUM 41 nebula. 

Image Description: The image is dominated by a nebula with pink to crimson colors, splattered with yellow, red, white and blue dots of different sizes that represent stars. A big yellow-colored star is located on the bottom left, with red and green rays extending more than twice the size of the dot itself. Dark brown clouds are located in the center, resembling an open hand. From it extend other, fainter dust clouds with amorphous shapes.

Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team 

Acknowledgement: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU)

Release Date: Sept. 16, 2024

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