NGC 6520 and its neighbour, the strangely shaped dark cloud Barnard 86. This cosmic pair is set against millions of glowing stars from the brightest part of the Milky Way — a region so dense with stars that barely any dark sky is seen across the picture. Credit: ESO
A small, isolated dark nebula known as a Bok globule was described as “a drop of ink on the luminous sky” by its discoverer, astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard. Through a small telescope, the object seen here, Barnard 86, does appear as though someone may have dropped a blob of dark ink on the telescope lens. Or perhaps it appears as a spot where there are no stars, or a window into a patch of distant, clearer sky. However, this object is actually in the foreground of the star field — a cold, dark, dense cloud made up of small dust grains that block starlight and make the region appear opaque. It is thought to have formed from the remnants of a molecular cloud that collapsed to form the nearby star cluster NGC 6520, seen just to the left of Barnard 86 in this image.
Some say Barnard 86 looks like a gecko … can you see the resemblance?
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Read the rest of Cosmic Ink-blot Test: Can You See the Gecko in Space? (110 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2013. |
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Post tags: Barnard 86, Bok Globules, ESO, Observatories
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