The Pipe Nebula is Smokin'!

Head out 450 light years from Earth, nearly in the direction of the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and one will come across a family of dark clouds — the Ophiuchus dark cloud complex.

Gas and dust within these complexes are collapsing, forming stars of the future.

First seen by astronomer E. E. Barnard in the early 20th Century, Barnard 78 (or B78) is one of a quintet of Barnard’s dark nebulae in this region of space. The dark squiggle toward the bottom right, resembling the number 5, is known as the Snake Nebula. Me? I would have named it the #5 Nebula, but they never ask me!

These dark clouds are seen as they were just a couple decades after Nicolaus Copernicus published his heliocentric model of the Solar System, and before the invention of the telescope (Hans Lipperhey of the Netherlands is usually credited with this advance for science).

Composite image by The Cosmic Companion. Created from eight red, green, blue, and monochrome images recorded over 80 minutes on the night of 29 July using the 10-cm AUS-2 Telescope in Australia, available from Telescope Live.

Clear skies!

James