See the stunning, star-forming Lobster Nebula in Dark Energy Camera image

By Georgina Torbet September 17, 2022

One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology today is what exactly the universe is made up of. We know that all of the ordinary matter in the universe makes up just 5% of the total universe, with the rest being made up of theoretical constructs: 27% of the universe is dark matter, and 68% is dark energy. We know that dark matter and dark energy must exist because we see their effects, but neither has ever been measured directly.

So to learn more about dark energy, an international large-scale survey called the Dark Energy Survey was launched to map out hundreds of millions of galaxies. Between 2013 and 2019 a collaboration of researchers used a purpose-built tool called the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope located in the Chilean Andes for these observations. But since the survey has come to an end, the Dark Energy Camera hasn’t been idle — it’s now used for research into a variety of astronomical topics, and it was recently used to capture this stunning image of the Lobster Nebula.

The star-forming nebula NGC 6357, known as the Lobster Nebula. — This image, taken by astronomers using the US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, captures the star-forming nebula NGC 6357, which is located 8000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scorpius. This image reveals bright, young stars surrounded by billowing clouds of dust and gas inside NGC 6357, which is also known as the Lobster Nebula. CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)

This 400-light-year-wide nebula is located around 8,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius. This cloud of dust and gas is illuminated by bright, young stars, with a particularly bright set of massive stars in a cluster called Pismis 24 in the heart of the nebula. The interactions of these massive stars, the younger stars forming around them, and the clumps of dust and gas which will eventually form another generation of stars all add to the complex, billowing shape of the nebula.

Capturing these different features was possible thanks to the Dark Energy Camera’s range of filters. “This image was constructed using some of a new range of very special DECam narrowband filters, which isolate very specific wavelengths of light,” NOIRLab explains. “They make it possible to infer the physics of distant objects, including important details about their inner motions, temperatures, and complex chemistry, which is especially important when examining star-forming regions like the Lobster Nebula.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Tech News

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

Space

James Webb detects important molecule in the stunning Orion nebula

This image is NIRCam’s view of the Orion Bar region studied by the team of astronomers. Bathed in harsh ultraviolet light from the stars of the Trapezium Cluster, it is an area of intense activity, with star formation and active astrochemistry. This made it a perfect place to study the exact impact that ultraviolet radiation has on the molecular makeup of the discs of gas and dust that surround new stars. The radiation erodes the nebula’s gas and dust in a process known as photoevaporation; this creates the rich tapestry of cavities and filaments that fill the view. The radiation also ionises the molecules, causing them to emit light — not only does this create a beautiful vista, it also allows astronomers to study the molecules using the spectrum of their emitted light obtained with Webb’s MIRI and NIRSpec instruments.

The Orion Nebula is famous for its beauty, but it was also the site of a recent exciting scientific discovery. The James Webb Space Telescope has detected an important molecule in a planet-forming disk of debris within the nebula. The molecule, called methyl cation (CH3+), is a carbon compound that is important for the formation of life and has never been observed in space before.

This image is NIRCam’s view of the Orion Bar region studied by the team of astronomers. Bathed in harsh ultraviolet light from the stars of the Trapezium Cluster, it is an area of intense activity, with star formation and active astrochemistry. This made it a perfect place to study the exact impact that ultraviolet radiation has on the molecular makeup of the discs of gas and dust that surround new stars. ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), the PDRs4All ERS Team

Space

See seasonal changes on Mars in two stunning images from MAVEN

mars maven ultraviolet seasons orbit16863 apo ladfit localff png

The planets in our solar system experience seasons because of the way that they are tilted in their orbits, so one hemisphere is facing the sun more often at some times of year than others. However, there's another factor which also affects weather and conditions on some planets, which is their position in their orbit around the sun. Earth has a relatively circular orbit, so the differences caused by it being slightly closer or further from the sun at different points are minimal. But Mars's orbit is much more eccentric or oval-shaped than Earth's, meaning conditions differ based on when the planet is closer to the sun.

That effect is illustrated in two images of Mars recently released by NASA, which show the planet at its closest and furthest point from the sun. Taken by a Mars orbiter called MAVEN, or Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, the images were taken six months apart in July 2022 and January 2023 respectively, showing how the environment of the planet changes with both season and the planet's orbit.

Space

This one instrument has surveyed 2 million objects to understand dark energy

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) making observations in the night sky on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

The vastness of the universe is hard to comprehend, let alone map, but a cosmological project from the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab aims to do just that. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is designed to create a 3D map of millions of astronomical objects, and an early release of data from the project combines the thousands of exposures taken by the instrument during its validation phase in 2020 and 2021. It contains nearly 2 million objects.

The video below shows part of the survey validation data, with detailed portions of the sky shown in 20 different directions. Each "beam" of light is one part of the data, showing objects like stars, galaxies, and quasars. There are over 700,000 objects in this 3D map, and as impressive as that is, this represents just 1% of the total volume that will be mapped out in the DESI survey.