Astronomer Rafael Bachiller discovers in this series the most spectacular phenomena of the Cosmos. Topics of throbbing research, astronomical adventures and scientific news about the Universe analyzed in depth.
From Cerro Paranal (Chile) a very detailed image of the Bat Nebula has been obtained. Actually, it is a complex of interstellar clouds in whose more opaque regions new stars are being born.
A dark corner of Orion
Located about one thousand three hundred light years away, in a dark corner of the constellation Orion, is the discreet nebula NGC1788. Contrary to the Great Orion Nebula (M42 or NGC1976), NGC1788 is too dim to be visible to the naked eye, a good telescope is needed to discern its complex shape and delicate colors. NGC1788 is at a distance similar to that of M42, but this is a nebula with large ionized regions and with its own emission, while the first is a reflection nebula that does not emit its own light, but simply reflects the light of the bright stars Which has closer. In fact, some of these stars are submerged in the depths of the cloud itself and its light reaches the exterior through the dimmer regions, but others are so obscured that they are not visible in the optic.
This nebula was discovered in 1786 by William Herschel, the discoverer of the planet Uranus and one of the greatest geniuses in the history of astronomy. Herschel included it in its catalog of nebulous objects that, after several transformations, is known today as 'NGC' (New General Catalog) and is still widely used. Thus, NGC1788 is the object number 1,788 of that great catalog 'NGC'. Despite being far from the bright stars of Orion, this hidden nebula soon caught the attention of astronomers because, with a little imagination, in large-field photographs, its shape resembles that of a flying bat, going through it to be known as the Bat Nebula.
New Suns
We know today that the capricious form of this nebula, consisting essentially of hydrogen, has been sculpted by the combined effect of winds and radiations from nearby stars. Along with hydrogen, there are small particles of solid material, grains similar to dust spots or grains of fine sand on a beach in the nebula. These fine grains of interstellar dust act as a screen that does not reveal the stars behind the nebula. That is why the most massive areas of the cloud are the darkest and most opaque. However, these dark regions are the ones that are of greatest interest to astronomers, since in the regions where the highest densities are reached, the precise conditions for new stars to form are given. In the images existing so far (for example, the one obtained with the 2.2 m telescope of the La Silla Observatory, ESO), the details of these darker areas were not appreciated.
The new image of the Bat Nebula, which heads this article, has been obtained with an 8.2 meter diameter telescope, with much greater sensitivity than the previous ones. This image reveals in detail all the details of the cloud and, in particular, the structure of its darkest regions where new suns must be born.
By revealing with exquisite detail all the most opaque regions of the Bat, this new image will allow other observations with infrared or radio wave telescopes, which normally have much smaller fields of vision, but which are able to 'see' inside Cloud. And in this way you will be able to locate the younger stars and stars that are forming inside the nebula. Studying these objects so young is essential to understand more and more details of how new stars are formed and, particularly, how our Sun was formed and its solar system of which we form a very modest part.
Also interesting
The image was obtained with one of the most powerful telescopes in the world: one of the four that make up the VLT (Very Large Telescope) set that ESO has installed on Cerro Paranal, in northern Chile. Each of these telescopes is equipped with a monolithic mirror of 8.2 meters in diameter.
Particularly accurate observation of the Bat Nebula was made to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of one of the most versatile and useful focal instruments of the VLT: the so-called FORS2 (FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2, that is, focal reducer and low spectrograph dispersion). This instrument has the peculiarity of being able to observe a relatively large field and offers a wide variety of functions, allowing from imaging to spectroscopic or polarimetry measurements. For this reason, astronomers close to ESO know it as 'the Swiss army knife' and, also for this reason, it is being one of the most productive instruments of the entire battery of high-tech instruments that are used in the four large telescopes of the VLT.
ESO, the main intergovernmental astronomical organization in Europe, has sixteen member countries, including Spain, in addition to the host country, Chile, and Australia as a strategic partner.
Rafael Bachiller is director of the National Astronomical Observatory (National Geographic Institute) and academic of the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain.
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