2023-06-28 04:00:00
An orange and red cloud, which is part of the Sh2-284 nebula, colloquially known as the Smiling Cat Nebula, has been obtained with data from the VLT Survey Telescope, located at the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
This nebula is a vast region of dust and gas and its brightest part, visible in the captured image, is about 150 light years (more than 1,400 trillion kilometers) across. It is located about 15,000 light years away from Earth, in the constellation Monoceros.
Located in the center of the brightest part of the nebula, just below the ‘cat’s nose’, is a cluster of young stars, known as Dolidze 25, which produce large amounts of radiation and strong winds. The radiation is powerful enough to ionize the hydrogen gas present in the cloud, thus producing its bright orange and red colors. In clouds like this is where the “bricks” for the construction of new stars are found.
Winds from the central star cluster blow away gas and dust in the nebula, hollowing out its center. When winds meet denser pockets of material, they offer more resistance, meaning the areas around them erode first.
This creates several pillars that can be seen, along the edges of Sh2-284, pointing to the center of the nebula, like the one on the right side of the image. While these pillars may appear small in the image, they are actually several light-years across and contain vast amounts of gas and dust from which new stars form.
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