Highlights of The Dark Wolf Nebula: SL 17 in Scorpius | ESO VLT Survey Telescope

Highlights of The Dark Wolf Nebula: SL 17 in Scorpius | ESO VLT Survey Telescope

This image shows a dark nebula at the center of the picture, against a background of reddish fumes. The shape of the dark nebulous cloud can appear to resemble a wolf’s head, looking to the right. Surrounding the dark nebula are bright white stars of a variety of sizes appearing as tiny dots and bigger gassy spheres.

This collage highlights details within the huge Dark Wolf Nebula, such as the wolf’s “head”, seen here in the top-center image. The pillars in the images to the right form when intense radiation from young stars encounters dense pockets of dust and gas. This radiation erodes and blows away the lighter material around these dense pockets, creating these pillar-like structures.

Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, this cosmic cloud was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Located around 5,300 light-years from Earth, the cold clouds of cosmic dust create the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colorful backdrop of glowing gas clouds.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/VPHAS+ team

Release Date: Oct. 31, 2024

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