{"id":114858,"date":"2025-10-31T21:46:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/114858\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T21:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:46:13","slug":"vst-spots-cosmic-bat-in-southern-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/114858\/","title":{"rendered":"VST Spots \u2018Cosmic Bat\u2019 in Southern Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Astronomers using ESO\u2019s VLT Survey Telescope<\/a> have captured a beautiful image of a large nebula, whose mesmerizing appearance resembles the silhouette of a bat.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

This VST image shows a cloud of gas and dust, shaped like a cosmic bat. The intense red glow comes from hydrogen atoms ionized by the intense radiation of young stars within the cloud. The most prominent objects here are RCW 94, which represents the right wing of the bat, and RCW 95, which forms the body, while the other parts of the bat have no official designation. Image credit: ESO \/ VPHAS+ Team \/ VVV Team.<\/p>\n

\u201cLocated about 10,000 light-years away, this \u2018cosmic bat\u2019 is flying between the southern constellations of Circinus and Norma,\u201d ESO astronomers said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpanning an area of the sky equivalent to four full Moons, it looks as if it\u2019s trying to hunt the glowing spot above it for food.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis nebula is a stellar nursery, a vast cloud of gas and dust from which stars are born.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe infant stars within it release enough energy to excite hydrogen atoms around them, making them glow with the intense shade of red seen in this eye-catching image.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dark filaments in the nebula look like the skeleton of our space bat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese structures are colder and denser accumulations of gas than their surroundings, with dust grains that block the visible light from stars behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNamed after a large catalogue of bright star-forming regions in the southern sky, the most prominent clouds here are RCW 94<\/a>, which represents the right wing of the bat, and RCW 95<\/a>, which forms the body, while the other parts of the bat have no official designation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This new image was captured with ESO\u2019s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at Paranal Observatory in Chile\u2019s Atacama Desert.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe VST has the perfect capabilities to capture these large spooky creatures,\u201d the astronomers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnboard it is OmegaCAM, a state-of-the-art 268-megapixel camera, which enables the VST to image vast areas of the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis image was pieced together by combining observations through different filters, transparent to different colors or wavelengths of light.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the bat\u2019s shape, including the red glow, was captured in visible light as part of the VST Photometric H\u03b1 Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAdditional infrared data add a splash of color in the densest parts of the nebula, and were obtained with ESO\u2019s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) as part of the VISTA Variables in the V\u00eda L\u00e1ctea (VVV) survey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth surveys are open to everyone who wants to dive deep in this endless pool of cosmic photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers using ESO\u2019s VLT Survey Telescope have captured a beautiful image of a large nebula, whose mesmerizing appearance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[40328,61,60,13923,69353,69354,69355,82,69356],"class_list":{"0":"post-114858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eso","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-nebula","12":"tag-omegacam","13":"tag-rcw-94","14":"tag-rcw-95","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-vst"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}