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The Gum Nebula is an emission nebula almost 1400 light-years away. It\u2019s home to an object known as \u201cGod\u2019s Hand\u201d among the faithful. The rest of us call it CG 4.<\/p>\n
Many objects in space take on fascinating, ethereal shapes straight out of someone\u2019s psychedelic fantasy. CG4 is definitely ethereal and extraordinary, but it\u2019s also a little more prosaic. It looks like a hand extending into space. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the NSF\u2019s V\u00edctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope\u00a0captured the image. DECam\u2019s primary job is to survey hundreds of millions of galaxies in its study of dark energy. But it\u2019s also a general-purpose instrument used for other scientific endeavours. <\/p>\n CG 4 is called a cometary globule because of its appearance. But it\u2019s actually a star-forming region. It has a head that\u2019s about 1.5 light-years in diameter and a tail that\u2019s about 8 light-years long. The head is dense and opaque and is lit up by a nearby star. The globule is surrounded by a diffuse red glow, emissions from ionized hydrogen. <\/p>\n There are lots of cometary globules in the Milky Way. They\u2019re a sub-class of objects called Bok globules, after astronomer Bart Bok, who discovered them. Both types of globules are dark nebulae, molecular clouds so dense they block optical light. Astronomers aren\u2019t absolutely certain how cometary globules get their shape. <\/p>\n But they do know what\u2019s happening to them.<\/p>\n \n
Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage\/NSF\u2019s NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF\u2019s NOIRLab)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n