A cosmic bubble


Wide star-filled view of space showing a large, round nebula left of center with a pale blue core and a golden-yellow outer ring streaked by dark dust filaments. A smooth, diffuse blue cloud spreads out to the left of this main nebula, fading into soft lavender and pink edges. On the right side, thin, wispy orange and reddish-brown gas filaments form a sprawling, curtain-like network, with several brighter knots and a few larger stars with faint diffraction spikes scattered among a dense background of tiny white stars.

Dave Doctor from Las Cruces, New Mexico

The emission nebula Sharpless 2–284 lies roughly 15,000 light-years away in Monoceros, where hot young stars are carving a cavity in the surrounding gas and sculpting dense pillars of dust. The bright emission in the region is also cataloged as LBN 985/6/7. The imager collected 23 hours 35 minutes of Hubble-palette data with an 11-inch f/2 RASA astrograph.