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.