Observe the Sh2-284 nebula in depth

The Sh2-284 nebula is a nursery for stars. It is a vast region of dust and gas and its brightest part is about 150 light-years across. It is located about 15,000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Monoceros.

Sh2-284 has been closely observed with the VST (VLT Survey Telescope), which is owned by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) and is located at the Paranal Observatory, attached to the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in Chile. The VST is dedicated to mapping the sky of the southern hemisphere in visible light and makes use of a 256 million pixel camera specially designed to take very wide field images.

Located in the center of the brightest part of the nebula is a cluster of young stars known as Dolidze 25, which produces large amounts of radiation and strong stellar winds.

The radiation is powerful enough to ionize the hydrogen gas present in the cloud, thus producing its brilliant orange and red colors.

It is in clouds like this that the “bricks” for the construction of new stars are found in great abundance.

Image of the Sh2-284 nebula obtained by the VST. (Photo: ESO / VPHAS+ team / CASU / INAF. CC BY 4.0)

Stellar winds from the central star cluster blow away gas and dust in the nebula, hollowing out its center.

When those stellar winds meet denser pockets of material, they offer more resistance, meaning the areas around them erode first. This creates pillar-like structures, or columns, along the edges of Sh2-284, pointing to the center of the nebula.

While these pillars may appear small in photos, they are actually several light-years across and contain vast amounts of gas and dust from which new stars form. (Source: European Southern Observatory. CC BY 4.0)