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Credit & Copyright: CEDIC Team - Processing:
Christoph Kaltseis
Explanation:
The faint and somehow menacing cometary globule CG4
reaches through the center of
this deep southern
skyscape.
About 1,300 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Puppis,
its head is about 1.5 light-years in diameter and its tail about
8 light-years long.
That's far larger than the Solar System's comets that
it seems to resemble.
In fact,
the dusty cloud contains enough material to form several Sun-like
stars and likely has ongoing star formation within.
How its distinctive form came about is still debated, but its
long tail trails away from the
Vela Supernova remnant near the
center of the Gum Nebula, while its head could represent
the rupture of an originally more spherical cloud.
Still, the edge-on spiral galaxy also near picture center is not
actually being
threatened by CG4.
The galaxy lies in the distant background more than 100 million
light-years
away.
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: cometary globule
Publications with words: cometary globule
See also: