A new image taken by the European Space Agency’s European Space Observatory telescopes reveals a beautiful dark appearance for Sadim It’s part of a region called NGC 2264, first discovered by astronomer William Herschel in the late 18th century, a star-forming region in the Milky Way 2,500 light-years from Earth that makes it look like a mythical creature.
The conical nebula’s unique shape is caused by huge clouds of cold molecular gas and dust that are known to form new stars.
This cloud formation occurs when newly forming massive blue stars emit intense stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation that reveal matter in their neighborhood.
This process helps create the dark Cone Nebula, which is receding from the brighter stars in NGC 2264. The image was captured by two instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the visible-light astronomical observatory most advanced in the world located in Chile.
Nebula nearby
While this particular nebula has been studied before, the new image shows it more dramatically: This nebula is located in the sky in the constellation Unicorn.
