Daily Telescope: Meet the Flying Bat and Squid nebulae
Enlarge / The Flying Bat and Squid nebulae. (credit: Ryan Genier)
Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light-a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we'll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.
Good morning. It is October 27, and today's image takes us 2,000 light-years from Earth. That is very far, but still in our little corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, which stretches about 105,000 light-years from end to end.
In this photo, courtesy of Ryan Genier, the large reddish object that covers much of the canvas is the Flying Bat Nebula. It is, essentially, a huge cloud of hydrogen gas. The Squid Nebula is shown in blue, indicating doubly ionized oxygen-which is when you ionize your oxygen once and then ionize it again just to make sure. (In all seriousness, it likely indicates a low-mass star nearing the end of its life).