The Sh2-284 stellar nursery is a vast region of dust and gas and its brightest part, visible in the image, is about 150 light-years (over 1400 trillion kilometers) across. It’s located some 15 000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Monoceros. This spectacular picture of the Sh2-284 nebula has been captured in great detail by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Sh2-284 is a star formation region, and at its centre there is a cluster of young stars, dubbed Dolidze 25. The radiation from this cluster is powerful enough to ionise the hydrogen gas in the nebula’s cloud. It is this ionisation that produces its bright orange and red colours. This image is part of the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge, led by Janet Drew at the U...
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