Described as a "dusty curtain" or "ghostly apparition," mysterious reflection nebula VdB 152 really is very faint. Far from your neighborhood on this Halloween Night, the cosmic phantom is nearly 1,400 light-years away. Also catalogued as Ced 201, it lies along the northern Milky Way in the royal constellation Cepheus. Near the edge of a large molecular cloud, pockets of interstellar dust in the region block light from background stars or scatter light from the embedded bright star giving parts of the nebula a characteristic blue color. Ultraviolet light from the star is also thought to cause a dim reddish luminescence in the nebular dust. Though stars do form in molecular clouds, this star seems to have only accidentally wandered into the area, as its measured velocity through space is very different from the cloud's velocity. This deep telescopic image of the region spans about 7 light-years.
Image Credit: Stephen Leshin
Explanation from: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2385.html
Arsalan
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Related Posts
Saturn seen by Cassini spacecraftStunning views like this image of Saturn's night side are only possible thanks to our robotic emiss
Fornax Galaxy ClusterCountless galaxies vie for attention in this monster image of the Fornax Galaxy Cluster, some appea
p1 GruisAstronomers using ESO�s Very Large Telescope have for the first time directly observed granulation 
VST image of kilonova in NGC 4993This image from the VST telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile shows the galaxy NGC 4993, 
Galaxy Cluster WHL J24.3324-8.477This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is chock-full of galaxies � each glowing speck is a diff
Exoplanet NGTS-1bThe Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) instrument at ESO�s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile