From the July 2026 issue

RCW 36: A bird of prey sails away

This nebula, which resembles a hawk, boasts an open cluster of massive young stars at its heart, surrounded by glowing clouds of hydrogen gas.
By | Published: May 21, 2026 | Last updated on June 12, 2026

A richly detailed telescope image of a star-forming nebula, filled with swirling clouds of blue, orange, and pink gas and dust. Dark pillars of dense dust cut through the center of the image, surrounded by glowing nebular material and hundreds of orange and yellow stars scattered throughout. A bright cluster of young stars illuminates the lower right portion of the image, casting a warm glow against the surrounding gas clouds.
Credit: ESO/A.R.G. do Brito do Vale et al.
A richly detailed telescope image of a star-forming nebula, filled with swirling clouds of blue, orange, and pink gas and dust. Dark pillars of dense dust cut through the center of the image, surrounded by glowing nebular material and hundreds of orange and yellow stars scattered throughout. A bright cluster of young stars illuminates the lower right portion of the image, casting a warm glow against the surrounding gas clouds.
Credit: ESO/A.R.G. do Brito do Vale et al.


In the early 1960s, Alexander Rodgers, Colin Campbell, and John Whiteoak compiled a catalog of emission nebulae in the southern Milky Way. A particularly impressive entry, RCW 36, resides 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Vela the Sails. RCW 36 boasts an open cluster of massive young stars at its heart, surrounded by glowing clouds of hydrogen gas destined to birth future generations. Thick ropes of cold gas and dust complete the picture. Some observers see a hawk in this nebula, with the dark body and head near the center and filamentary wings extending to the left and right. Appropriately enough, astronomers captured this image with the European Southern Observatory’s High Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager (HAWK-I). The camera views the cosmos through one of the 8-meter mirrors of the Very Large Telescope.

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