Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scorpius (Sco)
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Dark Tower of Scorpius, Gary Imm
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Dark Tower of Scorpius

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Dark Tower of Scorpius, Gary Imm
Powered byPixInsight

Dark Tower of Scorpius

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Description

This object, the Dark Tower of Scorpius, is located 5000 light years away in the southern constellation of Scorpius. The object is 40 light years long. It is a tough object for many of us to image because of its declination of -41 deg.

This object is described as a cometary globule - an isolated cloud of gas and dust within the Milky Way with a dense, dark head and a long faint tail, with some clumps slowly collapsing to form stars within the dark nebula. The cloud is shaped by intense ultraviolet radiation from the hot stars in the large star cluster NGC 6231, which is off image to the upper left. That same radiation is causing the reddish glow of hydrogen gas. This image helps to accentuate the hydrogen glow by supplementing the normal RGB data with Ha. Small bluish reflection nebulae can be seen in some of the stars embedded in the dust.

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