Employees at the NOIRLab research center have published a new image taken by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). It shows the NGC 6188 nebula, also known as the “Fighting Dragons.”
The nebula is located 4,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ara, at the edge of a large molecular cloud. It received its unusual nickname due to its resemblance to two “dragons” emerging from ominous dark clouds of dust to battle each other. The DECam image captures their “profiles” facing each other directly.
NGC 6188 is classified as an emission nebula. We can see it thanks to its glow in the optical range, caused by the ionization of its own gas. In this case, the reddish glow of the “dragons’” backs is ionized hydrogen, “excited” by the light of bright young stars that are only a few million years old.
27 of these young stars form the bright open cluster NGC 6193 (visible in the upper left part of the image), which provides a background glow that even more highlights the outlines of the dragons. These young stars are also sources of intense stellar winds. They interact with the gas and dust clouds surrounding them, forming bizarre shapes in which, thanks to the properties of human consciousness, familiar images can be seen.
The Dark Energy Camera that took the image of the nebula is installed on Victor Blanco’s 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. It is one of the most advanced astronomical instruments of our time. The camera is capable of capturing detailed images of faint astronomical objects and revealing subtle patterns in the cosmic structure caused by the influence of dark energy and dark matter.
Earlier, we reported on how the Dark Energy Camera photographed an ominous dark cloud.
According to NORILab
