Snapped using their 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope, the superb image above was released this week by the European Southern Observatory, showing part of the Milky Way in Ophiuchus, the much neglected thirteenth zodiac sign.
Darkness in the sky can represent an absence of stars. But when marked out against a forest of stars such as this, it indicates dark molecular clouds that block out the light of everything behind them from our point of view. This particular dust cloud is known as LDN1774 and like other molecular clouds, it is only a few degrees warmer than absolute zero. It is from these clouds that future generations of stars will form. As Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: only in darkness, light.
Newly Released Photograph Shows Strange "Hole" In Space | IFLScience
Darkness in the sky can represent an absence of stars. But when marked out against a forest of stars such as this, it indicates dark molecular clouds that block out the light of everything behind them from our point of view. This particular dust cloud is known as LDN1774 and like other molecular clouds, it is only a few degrees warmer than absolute zero. It is from these clouds that future generations of stars will form. As Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: only in darkness, light.
Newly Released Photograph Shows Strange "Hole" In Space | IFLScience
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