The Dark Energy Camera's New Image Is Reminiscent of van Gogh
17 hours ago
- The Dark Energy Camera captured a new image of the Corona Australis molecular cloud, featuring gas swirls reminiscent of Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night'.
- Corona Australis is a dark nebula about 425 light years away, one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth.
- The binary star R Coronae Australis illuminates a nearby orange cloud and creates reflection and emission nebulae like NGC 6729.
- Newborn stars light up gas, turning it blue, while reflection nebulae NGC 6726, NGC 6727, and IC 4812 appear in beige and yellow.
- NGC 6723 (Chandelier Cluster) is about 29,000 light years away and contains hundreds of thousands of stars.
- Research shows Corona Australis is dynamic: a 2023 paper found it accelerating away from the Galactic plane due to two supernova explosions.
- A 2025 paper divided the complex into two subregions (CrA-Main and CrA-North) moving apart from each other.
- Herbig-Haro objects like HH100 are transient, lasting only tens of thousands of years.