New telescope images reveal a ghostly ‘hand of God’ in the Milky Way that extends across the universe

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What appears like a ghostly hand reaching across the universe toward a helpless spiral galaxy in a new telescope image is a rarely seen cosmic phenomenon, according to astronomers.

the The Dark Energy Camera captured an amazing photo The “Hand of God”, a cometary ball 1,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. The camera was mounted on the 4-meter Víctor M. Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Comet globules are a type of Bock globules, or dark nebula. These isolated cosmic clouds are filled with dense gas and dust, surrounded by hot, energetic material. Comet globules are unique because they have extended tails, like those seen on comets, but that is the only thing about them that is comet-like.

Astronomers still don’t know how cometary spherules exist in such distinctive structures. Historically, faint clouds have also been difficult for scientists to detect.

The new image of the glowing red hand-like feature shows CG 4, one of several cometary globules found in the Milky Way. The twisted cloud appears to be heading toward a spiral galaxy known as ESO 257-19 (PGC 21338). But the galaxy is more than 100 million light-years away from the comet’s ball.

CG 4 has a dusty, hand-like main head, 1.5 light-years across, and a long tail spanning 8 light-years. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, which is 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion km).

Astronomers first discovered cometary spherules by chance in 1976 while looking at images taken by the British Schmidt Telescope in Australia. These cosmic phenomena are difficult to observe because they are incredibly faint, and the globule tails are usually obscured from view by stardust.

But the Dark Energy Camera has a special filter that can detect the faint red glow emanating from ionized hydrogen, located at the outer edge and tip of CG 4. Hydrogen only produces such a clear red glow after being irradiated nearby. Huge hot stars.

While stellar radiation enables the comet’s ball to be visible, it also destroys the head of the ball over time. However, there is enough gas and dust inside the ball to help birth several stars the size of our Sun.

Comet globules can be found throughout our galaxy, but most are found in the Gum Nebula, a glowing cloud of gas thought to be the slowly expanding remnants of a star explosion about a million years ago. The Gum Nebula is believed to contain 31 cometary globule in addition to CG 4.

Astronomers believe there are two ways in which spherules can form their distinctive comet-like shapes.

These globules were probably round-shaped nebulae, like the iconic nebula Ring nebulawhich was disrupted over time by a supernova — and perhaps even the one that formed the Gum Nebula.

But cosmic phenomena may also be the result of winds and radiation emitted by nearby hot massive stars.

Astronomers believe that stars may be the underlying cause because all cometary globules in the Gum Nebula have tails that point away from the center of the nebula. At the center of the nebula are the remnants of a supernova as well as a pulsar, or a rapidly rotating neutron star that formed when a much larger star collapsed and exploded.