Dark, billowing clouds sweep across a shocking latest view of a big star-forming area of the Orion constellation.
These dense interstellar clouds of gas and mud comprise a dark nebula, formally often called LDN 1622. Dark nebulas are so named because their thick interstellar dust obscures light from nearby stars and other neighboring objects, based on a press release from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) NOIRLab.
LDN 1622 is positioned 1,300 light-years from Earth within the nearby Orion complex, a star-forming region teeming with young stars. It’s positioned near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy near the belt and sword of the Orion constellation.
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The recent image was taken using the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope on the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in Arizona, which is operated by NOIRLab (formally the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory).
Astronomers captured this view of LDN 1622 using the telescope’s wide-field camera, called Mosaic-3 — the predecessor of the Mayall scope’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which began operations in 2020 as probably the most powerful multi-object survey spectrograph on the earth, based on the statement.
“This swap highlights certainly one of the advantages of ground-based astronomy: the flexibility to upgrade and replace instruments as latest technologies turn out to be available,” NOIRLab officials said within the statement.
This latest image, which NOIRLab shared on June 21, was taken in 2018, before the 2022 Contreras fire that impacted the observatory. The hearth, which was brought on by a lightning strike, reached the observatory on June 17, 2022.
While the blaze didn’t reach any of the observatories’ instruments, it did destroy some non-scientific buildings at the location. DESI is currently operating normally, while the Mosaic-3 instrument has since been retired.