April 28, 2026
You are a way for the cosmos to know itself, Carl Sagan once said. On your birthday, the cosmos got to know itself a little better.
CG 30: Cometary Globules
Birthday · April 28, 2026
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APOD published April 28, 2026. Credit: Marcelo Salemme. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
They're like mountain peaks, but they are forming stars. Bright-rimmed, flowing shapes gather near the center of this rich starfield toward the borders of the nautical southern constellations Puppis and Vela. Composed of interstellar gas and dust, the grouping of light-year sized cometary globules is about 1300 light-years distant. Energetic ultraviolet light from nearby hot stars has molded the globules and ionized their bright rims. The globules also stream away from the Vela supernova remnant which may have influenced their swept-back shapes. Within them, cores of cold gas and dust are likely collapsing to form low mass stars whose formation will ultimately cause the globules to disperse. In fact, cometary globule CG 30 (upper right in the group) sports a small reddish glow inside its head, a telltale sign of energetic jets from a star in the early stages of formation.
Image credit: Marcelo Salemme