The so-called Running Chicken Nebula, which contains newborn stars in the process of formation, is shown in incredible detail in a 1.5-billion-pixel image captured by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), which is situated at the Paranal location in Chile and sponsored by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
This massive star nursery is located in the Centaurus (Centaur) constellation, around 6,500 light-years from Earth. The intense radiation emitted by the young stars within this nebula produces a variety of pinkish-white hues.
Covering an extent in the sky comparable to roughly 25 full moons, the Running Chicken Nebula has multiple regions, all seen in this enormous shot. It is in the brightest spot in the nebula, IC 2948, that some observers report seeing the chicken’s head and others its tail. Whispy, pastel gas and dust puffs make up the pastel shapes. Near the centre of the photograph, you can make out IC 2944, a tall, light structure that resembles a pillar. Lambda Centauri is the brightest star in this area, which is visible to the human eye and far closer to Earth than the nebula itself.
Conversely, IC 2944 and 2948 are home to many bright young stars. As they spew forth massive quantities of radiation, they rip their environment apart in a chicken-like fashion. Some regions of the nebula, called Bok globules, may withstand the high UV radiation that this area produces. They seem to be little, dark, dense dust and gas pockets spread out throughout the nebula.
ESO, IAU and Sky & Telescope.
The additional locations shown include Gum 39 and 40 on the upper right and Gum 41 on the lower right. Like fireworks, the sky is adorned with an endless array of orange, white, and blue stars, except nebulae.
The painstaking assembly of hundreds of individual frames makes up this enormous mosaic. The final product is the result of combining many images taken with different filters that let light of different colours flow through. The observations were conducted using the wide-field camera OmegaCAM on the VST, a telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at its Paranal site in the Atacama Desert of Chile and owned by the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy (INAF). Regarding visible light sky mapping, this telescope is second to none. This mosaic was made possible by data acquired as part of the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), an initiative to learn more about star formation and evolution.
