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Credit & Copyright: Alessandro Cipolat Bares
Explanation:
The Dark Doodad Nebula drifts
through southern skies,
a tantalizing target for binoculars toward the small constellation
Musca, The Fly.
A dusty interstellar cloud, it's seen against
rich starfields just south of the Coalsack Nebula and the Southern Cross.
Stretching for about 3 degrees across this telescopic field of view,
the Dark Doodad
is punctuated near its southern tip (upper right) by yellowish
globular star cluster
NGC 4372.
Of course NGC 4372 roams the halo of our
Milky Way
galaxy, a background object some 20,000 light-years away and only
by chance along our line-of-sight to the Dark Doodad.
About 700 light-years distant and over 30 light-years long,
the Dark Doodad's well defined silhouette belongs to the
potentially star-forming
Musca molecular cloud.
The dusty Dark Doodad's delightfully alliterative moniker was first coined by
astro-imager and writer
Dennis di Cicco in 1986 while
observing Comet Halley from the Australian outback.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: globular cluster - dark nebula - molecular cloud
Publications with words: globular cluster - dark nebula - molecular cloud
See also:
- APOD: 2026 July 7 Á NGC 6188: Dragons of Ara
- APOD: 2026 May 23 Á Messier 2
- APOD: 2026 May 19 Á NGC 2170: The Angel Nebula
- APOD: 2026 February 20 Á B93: A Dark Interstellar Ghost
- LDN 1622: Dark Nebula in Orion
- APOD: 2025 December 28 Á NGC 1898: Globular Cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud
- A Dark Seahorse in Cepheus