Up to 1.5 billion pixels, astronomers synthesize new images of the Chicken Nebula

CTOnews.com, December 22 (Xinhua)-- the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has synthesized the latest picture of the Chicken Nebula (IC 2944) in 1.5 billion pixels with the help of the very large Survey Telescope (VST).

CTOnews.com Note: IC 2944, also known as the Walking Chicken Nebula or λ Centauri Nebula, is a nebula made up of open clusters and emission nebulae near λ Centauri.

It is characterized by having a Buck sphere and is an active region of star formation, 6523 light-years from Earth.

It includes a large hydrogen cloud and an open star cluster that shines on it. The center of the cloud is shaped like a chicken head, so it is also nicknamed the Chicken Nebula.

The chicken head in the picture is looking back to the upper right corner, with two bright stars on the lower left in the middle to form its eyes. Its line of sight happens to be guided by a string of bright blue stars.

In the direction of the blue star, we can see a group of dark nebulae in the shape of fragments, called Thackeray'sGlobules. We don't know much about these cloud balls, except that they appear in the star-forming region from time to time. The largest cloud in the picture is about 1.4 light-years across and is nearly 15 times the mass of the sun.

This photo is actually composed of hundreds of photos, and the final panoramic image is as high as 1.5 billion. Interested users can visit here to download:

Fullsize Original 3.9 GB checksum

Large JPEG 733.7 MB checksum

Publication TIFF 40K 3.4 GB checksum

Publication TIFF 25K 1.2 GB checksum

Publication TIFF 10K 162.7 MB checksum

Publication TIFF 4K 27.5 MB

Publication JPEG 6.7 MB

Screensize JPEG 498.8 KB