June 14, 2024
You share your birthday with the light of distant galaxies that has been traveling for millions of years just to arrive here, now, alongside...
RCW 85
Birthday · June 14, 2024
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APOD published June 14, 2024. Credit: Martin Pugh. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
From the 1960 astronomical catalog of Rodgers, Campbell and Whiteoak, emission region RCW 85 shines in southern night skies between bright stars Alpha and Beta Centauri. About 5,000 light years distant, the hazy interstellar cloud of glowing hydrogen gas and dust is faint. But detailed structures along well-defined rims within RCW 85 are traced in this cosmic skyscape composed of 28 hours of narrow and broadband exposures. Suggestive of dramatic shapes in other stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are sculpted by energetic winds and radiation from newborn stars, the tantalizing nebula has been called the Devil's Tower. This telescopic frame would span around 100 light-years at the estimated distance of RCW 85.
Image credit: Martin Pugh