Inside the bright but unassumingly named nebula Gum 55 lies a dark nebula — a rift of dust grains that absorb visible light — creating a swatch of darkness against the glow of bright gas. Fittingly named for its shape, the Dark Wolf Nebula is no mere puppy — it spans an area some four times the size of the Full Moon.
Gum 55 is even bigger, a huge stellar nursery actively making new stars that burn fiercely, their radiation pushing away the material that formed them, creating shells and pillars of denser material. These complex layers create the beautiful and evocative shapes that so captivate astronomers and the public alike, including the piles of dark dust that comprise the Dark Wolf Nebula.
The Dark Wolf and Gum 55 reside in Scorpius near the heart of the Milky Way, some 5,300 light-years distant. The European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) VLT Survey Telescope at Paranal, Chile, resolved the above image, which was released Oct. 31.
