Astronomers capture vast cosmic bat spreading its wings in time for Halloween (photo)

Astronomers have captured the glowing “wings” of a vast nebula shaped like a bat, unfurling in deep space about 10,000 light-years from Earth in the constellations Circinus and Norma, just in time for Halloween!

The nebula’s haunting outline t is carved from swirling clouds of gas and dust inside a vast stellar nursery. These clouds glow as hydrogen atoms within them are energized by intense radiation pouring from the energetic population of young stars embedded within.

Dark filaments of interstellar dust thread through the nebula scene, can be seen blocking the light of the nebula clouds beyond. These twisting giants are rich with star-forming material from which a new generation of stellar behemoths will be born. Our brain’s natural propensity for creating order out of chaos causes some to interpret the scene as a colossal bat hunting the scrap of shining nebula visible at the top of the image.

The striking deep space collage — spanning the equivalent of four full moons in the night sky — was captured using the 268-megapixel Omegacam instrument mounted on the 2.6-meter VLT Survey Telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal site in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Astronomers used a range of specialized filters to capture the ancient nebula’s light during a survey of the Milky Way’s galactic plane, which was then combined with infrared observations to highlight the region’s hidden structure.

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The ESO released the new photo of the bat nebula on Oct. 31.

Editor’s Note: If you would like to share your own deep space astrophotography with Space.com’s readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.