Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2024 September 24
A brown dusty nebula is shown in front of a star field.
The nebula looks to some like a baboon, with red emission
stemming from the mouth and blue reflection from the eyes.
Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

NGC 6727: The Rampaging Baboon Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Alpha Zhang & Ting Yu

Explanation: This dusty region is forming stars. Part of a sprawling molecular cloud complex that resembles, to some, a rampaging baboon, the region is a relatively close by 500 light-years away toward the constellation Corona Australis. That's about one third the distance of the more famous stellar nursery known as the Orion Nebula. Mixed with bright nebulosities, the brown dust clouds effectively block light from more distant background stars in the Milky Way and obscure from view embedded stars still in the process of formation. The eyes of the dust creature in the featured image are actually blue reflection nebulas cataloged as NGC 6726, 6727, 6729, and IC 4812, while the red mouth glows with light emitted by hydrogen gas. Just to the upper left of the baboon's head is NGC 6723, a whole globular cluster of stars nearly 30,000 light years in the distance.

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