A new image taken by the European Space Observatory telescopes of the European Space Agency reveals a beautiful, dark appearance for Sadim It’s part of a region called NGC 2264, first discovered by astronomer William Herschel in the late 18th century, a star-forming region in the Milky Way 2,500 light-years from Earth that makes it look like a mythical creature.
The conical nebula’s unique shape is caused by massive clouds of cold molecular gas and dust that are known to form new stars.
This cloud formation occurs when newly formed massive blue stars give off intense stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation that reveals matter from their neighborhood.
This process helps create the dark Cone Nebula, which is drifting away from the brightest stars in NGC 2264. The image was acquired by two instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory located in Chile.
Nebula nearby
Although this particular nebula has been studied before, the new image shows it in a more dramatic way. This nebula can be found in the sky in the constellation Monoceros.
