Stunning Image of the Dark Wolf Nebula Revealed by European Southern Observatory: Halloween Unveils a Cosmic Canine

The Dark Wolf Nebula is visible in the sky in the constellation Scorpius, near the center of the Milky Way. It is located about 5,300 light-years away and is part of the larger Gum 55 nebula. It was presented by the Southern European Observatory on Halloween.

“If anyone thought that darkness equals emptiness, they should think again,” the statement said, explaining that the dark nebulae in place they are cold clouds of dust so thick that they block the light of the stars far behind them. Unlike other types of nebulae, these objects do not emit visible light because dust particles absorb this type of radiation. However, infrared radiation can pass through.

“The image shows in detail how the dark wolf stands out against the background of star-forming clouds behind it. The colored clouds are made up mostly of of hydrogen gas and glow in red color when they are raised by intense ultraviolet radiation from newborn stars,” we read.

The image was obtained by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), a sky survey telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The telescope belongs to the Italian National Astrophysical Institute (INAF) and has a special camera adapted to map the sky in the visible spectrum. The displayed image has 283 million pixels and is a composite of images taken at different times and with different filters as part of a project called the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), which has studied about 500 million objects in the Milky Way.

ESO has reported that some dark nebulae are visible to the naked eye. An example is the Carbon Sack Nebula. The Mapuche, the people who live in south-central Chile, call this nebula the word “pozoko”, which means well of water. In turn, the Incas gave this name “yutu”, which refers to a bird similar to a partridge.