What may appear at first glance to be an eerie, empty void in an otherwise star-filled scene is really a cloud of cold, dark dust and molecular gas, so dense and opaque that it obscures the distant stars that lie beyond it from our point of view.

Similar to the more well-known Barnard 68, “dark nebula” LDN 483 is seen above in an image taken by the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope’s Wide Field Imager at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

While it might seem like a cosmic no-man’s-land, no stars were harmed in the making of this image – on the contrary, dark nebulae like LDN 483 are veritable maternity wards for stars. As their cold gas and dust contracts and collapses new stars form inside them, remaining cool until they build up enough density and gravity to ignite fusion within their cores. Then, shining brightly, the young stars will gradually blast away the remaining material with their outpouring wind and radiation to reveal themselves to the galaxy.

The process may take several million years, but that’s just a brief flash in the age of the Universe. Until then, gestating stars within LDN 483 and many other clouds like it remain dim and hidden but keep growing strong.

Wide-field view of the LDN 483 region. (Credit: ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2)

Located fairly nearby, LDN 483 is about 700 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Serpens.

Source: ESO

Jason Major

A graphic designer in Rhode Island, Jason writes about space exploration on his blog Lights In The Dark, Discovery News, and, of course, here on Universe Today. Ad astra!

Recent Posts

How Many Additional Exoplanets are in Known Systems?

NASA's TESS mission has turned up thousands of exoplanet candidates in almost as many different…

15 mins ago

Hubble and Webb are the Dream Team. Don't Break Them Up

Many people think of the James Webb Space Telescope as a sort of Hubble 2.…

7 hours ago

Scientists Have Figured out why Martian Soil is so Crusty

On November 26th, 2018, NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight)…

15 hours ago

Another Way to Extract Energy From Black Holes?

Black holes are incredible powerhouses, but they might generate even more energy thanks to an…

21 hours ago

Plastic Waste on our Beaches Now Visible from Space, Says New Study

According to the United Nations, the world produces about 430 million metric tons (267 U.S.…

2 days ago

Future Space Telescopes Could be Made From Thin Membranes, Unrolled in Space to Enormous Size

As we saw with JWST, it's difficult and expensive to launch large telescope apertures, relying…

2 days ago