New 1.5 billion pixel image shows the Running Chicken Nebula in unprecedented detail

While many holiday traditions involve a feast of turkey, soba, latkes, or Pan de Pascua, this year, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is bringing you a festive chicken. This 1.5 billion pixel image taken by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal site in Chile clearly shows the so-called “Running Chicken Nebula”, which is home to young stars being formed.

This massive stellar nursery is located in the constellation Centauri (the Centauri), about 6,500 light-years from Earth. Young stars in this nebula emit intense radiation that causes the surrounding hydrogen gas to glow pink.

The Rooster Nebula actually consists of several regions, all of which we can see in this huge image spanning about 25 full-moon regions in the sky. The brightest region within the nebula is called IC 2948, where some people see chicken heads and others see butts. The slender, soft outlines are flowing plumes of gas and dust. IC 2944 is a bright, vertical, almost columnar structure at the center of the image. The brightest twinkle in this particular region is Lambda Centauri, a star visible to the naked eye that is much closer than we are. The nebula itself.

However, IC 2948 and IC 2944 themselves also featured many young stars, and while they might be smart, they were certainly unhappy. When they spew out large amounts of radiation, they destroy the environment like chickens. Some regions of the nebula, known as Bock globules, can withstand the intense bombardment of ultraviolet radiation that pervades the region. If you zoom in on the image, you might see them: small, dark, and dense clumps of dust and gas scattered across the nebula.

Other areas in the image include Gum 39 and 40 on the upper right, and Gum 41 on the lower right. In addition to the nebulae, there are countless orange, white and blue stars, like fireworks in the sky. Overall, there are more indescribable wonders in this picture, zoom in and pan, and you will get a visual feast.

The image is a large mosaic composed of hundreds of individual frames carefully stitched together. Individual images were captured through filters that allowed different colors of light to pass through, and then combined into the final result presented here.

The observations were made with the wide-field camera OmegaCAM on the VST, a telescope owned by the Italian National Institute for Astronomy and Physics (INAF) and hosted by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Parana, Chile’s Atacama Desert. The site is ideal for mapping the southern sky in visible light. The data used to create this mosaic are part of the VST Photometric H Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), a project designed to better understand the life cycles of stars.